MWKWOEK5*  t$&8 


BY  THE 

Rev.  R.  HEBER  NEWTON. 

I. — Philistinism :  Plain  Words  Concerning  Certain 
Forms  of  Unbelief.  Pp.  ix.  4-  322.  i6mo,  cloth, 
$1.00;  paper  .  .  50 

CONTENTS. — Concerning  Philistinism  and  its  Goliath — Christianity 
and  its  Critics — Dogmas :  The  Trinity  and  Original  Sin — Election 
and  Atonement — The  Resurrection  of  the  Body  and  Future  Pun- 
ishment. The  Mystery  of  Matter — Mind  in  Nature — Design  in 
Nature — The  Problem -of  Pain  in  the  Animal  World — The  Problem 
of  Pain  in  the  Human  World — The  Historic  Fact — Jesus  the  Christ 
— Immortality  in  the  Light  of  Physical  Science. 

"  We  would  commend  these  sermons  to  the  thoughtful  souls  who  want  more  light 
and  stronger  reasons  for  the  old  faiths." — inter-Ocean. 

II. — Womanhood.  Lectures  on  Woman's  Work  in  the 
World.  i2mo,  pp.  315  .  .  .  .  i  25 

"  All  earnest  women,  and  candid,  unselfish  men,  will  read  this  series  of  chapters 
with  warm  gratitude  to  its  author." — The  Nation. 

"  No  woman,  young  or  old,  can  read  these  lectures  without  great  profit.  .  .  .  We 
wish  they  might  find  a  place  in  every  home  where  mother,  wife,  or  daughter  dwells.' 
— National  Journal  of  Education. 

III. — The  Book  of  the  Beginnings.  A  Study  of  Genesis, 
with  a  General  Introduction  to  the  Study  of  the  Penta- 
teuch. i6mo,  cloth,  pp.  xv.  -(-  3°7  •  •  .100 
Paper 40 

"  He  has  read  the  best  books  intelligently,  and  stated  their  results  clearly,  in  a  not 
unattractive  style  and  in  a  reverent  spirit.  These  '  talks  '  will  be  acceptable  to  the 
general  public,  who  wish  to  see  on  what  grounds  the  critics  base  their  conclusions  re- 
specting the  Pentateuch."—  The  Nation. 

IV.— The  Right  and  Wrong  Uses  of  the  Bible.  i6mo, 
cloth,  pp.  264 75 

"  It  is  impossible  to  read  these  sermons  without  high  admiration  of  the  author's 
courage,  of  his  honesty,  his  reverential  spirit,  his  wide  and  careful  reading,  and  his 
true  conservatism."— American  Literary  Churchman. 

V. — Social  Studies.  i6mo,  cloth  .  .  .  .100 
CHIEF  CONTENTS. — A  Bird's-Eye-View  of  the  Labor  Problem — 
The  Story  of  Cooperative  Production  and  Cooperative  Credit  in 
the  United  States — The  Story  of  Cooperative  Distribution  in  the 
United  States— Is  the  State  Just  to  the  Workingman  ? — Old-Time 
Guilds  and  Modern  Commercial  Associations — The  Prevention  of 
Intemperance — Moral  Education  in  the  Public  Schools — The  Free 
Kindergarten  in  Church  Work — The  Religious  Aspect  of  Socialism 
and  Communism. 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS,  NEW  YORK  AND  LONDON. 


SOCIAL    STUDIES 


R.  HEBER  NEWTON 
'  * 

RECTOR   OF  ALL  SOULS*    CHURCH,  NBW  YORK 


NEW  YORK  &  LONDON 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S   SONS 

&\t  Jmiclurbochtr  |!«ss 

1887 


fft 


COPYRIGHT   BY 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 
1886 


I 

Press  of 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 
New  York 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

I.     A  BIRD'S-EYE  VIEW  OF  THE  LABOR  QUESTION    .  3 
II.     THE  STORY  OF  CO-OPERATIVE  PRODUCTION  AND 

CO-OPERATIVE  CREDIT  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  85 

III.  THE  STORY  OF  CO-OPERATIVE  DISTRIBUTION  IN 

THE  UNITED  STATES       .        .         .         .         -113 

IV.  Is  THE  STATE  JUST  TO  THE  WORKINGMAN  ?          .  133 
V.     OLD-TIME   GUILDS  AND    MODERN    COMMERCIAL 

ASSOCIATIONS          .         •  «      •        •         •        •  *53 

VI.     THE  PREVENTION  OF  INTEMPERANCE  .         .         .  175 

VII.     MORAL  EDUCATION  IN  THE  PUBLIC  SCHOOLS       .  199 

VIII.     THE  FREE  KINDERGARTEN  IN  CHURCH  WORK     .  215 

IX.     THE  RELIGIOUS  ASPECT  OF  SOCIALISM         .         .  261 

X.     COMMUNISM. 299 

XI.     NOTES 359 


A   BIRD'S-EYE    VIEW   OF   THE   LABOR 
PROBLEM. 


OUTLINE. 

The  labor  question  coming  on — two  sides  of  it. 

1.  Faults  of  labor — (i)  Inefficiency  and  lack  of  interest  in  its  work — 
(2)  Lack  of  identification  with  its  employers — (3)  Thriftlessness — (4)  Lack 
of  power  of  combination  and  of  wisdom  in  using  its  power — Trades  unions 
— Strikes — Arbitration — The  provident  features  of  trades  unions — Trades 
unions  and  legislation — Trades  unions  and  bureaus  of  labor  statistics — Co- 
operation— In  Europe — In  the  United  States — Trades  unions  and  co-opera- 
tion— Correction  of  labor's  faults. 

2.  Social  conditions  partly  responsible  for  these  faults — (i)  Conditions 
causing  labor's  inefficiency — Heredity — Environment — Defective  legislation 
— Defective   education — Society's   duty   touching    education — State's   duty 
touching   education — (2)   Conditions    creating    labor's    lack    of    interest — 
Changed  character  of  industry  in  modern  world — Employers  have  failed  to 
appreciate  this,  and  to  provide  for  the  better  social  condition  of  working- 
men — Examples  of  the  true  relation  of  capital  to  labor  in  Europe  and  the 
United  States — Arbitration  as  a  substitute  for  strikes — (3)  Conditions  en- 
gendering thriftlessness  of  labor — Lack  of  education  in  habits  of  saving — 
Intermittent  occupation — Discouraging  influence  of  poverty — How  poverty 
is  aggravated  by  monopolies — (4)  The  task  before  society. 

3.  Social  forces  favoring  capital  and  land  against  labor — (i)  Legislation 
works  against  labor — (2)    Industrial  development  works   against   labor — 
Effect  of  machinery — Labor  must  control  mechanism — What  the  State  may 
do  to  help  this — The  problem  of  distribution — (3)  Land  works  against  labor 
— Land  the  basis  of  industry — Labor's  relation  to  the  soil  in  a  simple  state 
of  society — Changes  in  the  tenure  of  land — Monopolies  of  land — Effects 
upon  civilization — Relations  of  rent  to  labor — The  problem  of  land  nation- 
alization— First  step  towards  the  people's  proprietorship  of  land. 

4.  Summary — Suggestions-r-Objections    to    governmental    action    con- 
sidered. 


A  BIRD'S  EYE  VIEW  OF    THE    LABOR    PROBLEM.* 


The  broad  fact  that  the  United  States  census  of  1870  esti- 
mated the  average  annual  income  of  our  wage-workers  at  a 
little  over  $400  per  capita,  and  that  the  census  of  1880  esti- 
mates it  at  a  little  over  $300  per  capita,  is  quite  sufficient  evi- 
dence that  there  is  a  labor  question  coming  upon  us  in  this 
country.  The  average  wages  of  1870,  after  due  allowance  for 
the  inclusion  of  women  and  children,  indicated  a  mass  of 
miserably  paid  labor — that  is,  of  impoverished  and  degraded 
labor.  The  average  wages  of  1880  indicated  that  this  mass  oi 
semi-pauperized  labor  was  rapidly  increasing,  and  that  its  con- 
dition had  become  twenty-five  per  cent,  worse  in  ten  years. 
The  shadow  of  the  old  world  proletariat  is  thus  seen  to  be 
stealing  upon  our  shores.  It  is  for  specialists  in  political 
economy  to  study  this  problem  in  the  light  of  the  large  social 
forces  that  are  working  such  an  alarming  change  in  our  Ameri- 
can society.  In  the  consensus  of  their  ripened  judgment  we 
must  look  for  the  authoritative  solution  of  this  problem.  I  am 
not  here  to  assume  that  role.  I  have  no  pet  hobby  to  propose, 
warranted  to  solve  the  whole  problem  without  failure.  I  do 
not  believe  there  is  any  such  specific  yet  out. 

*Read  before  the  United  States  Senate  Committee  on  Education  and 
Labor,  September  18,  1883,  on' invitation  of  the  committee. 

3 


4  LABOR'S  OWN  FAULTS. 

While  I  await  hopefully  the  broad  study  of  these  problems 
by  trained  specialists,  and  while  I  thoroughly  recognize  that 
mighty  natural  laws  are  driving  the  world  of  industry  and  trade, 
yet  I  do  not  think  we  ought  to  make  fetishes  of  such  laws, 
and  sit  down  before  them  with  the  impotence  of  despair. 

The  natural  laws  which  adjust  the  affairs  of  man  take  up  into 
themselves,  as  factors  in  their  forces,  reason,  sentiment,  con- 
science and  will.  Man  weights  these  laws  by  his  ignorance 
and  folly  and  selfishness,  and  can  weight  them  on  the  other 
side  by  his  wisdom  and  conscience  and  brotherliness.  He  can 
largely  command  the  natural  law  of  society,  just  as  he  so  largely 
commands  the  natural  law  of  the  physical  world.  My  vocation 
leads  me  to  study  natural  law  as  the  expression  of  mind  and 
will.  And  so  in  political  economy  I  see  the  laws  of  man  as  he 
is,  of  the  average  existing  man,  and  find  at  the  core  of  the  evils 
human  fault,  the  errors  and  wrongs  and  imperfections  of  the 
beings  who  are  the  atoms  in  the  social  world,  in  the  correction 
of  which  things  will  be  bettered.  Tregarva,  in  "Yeast," 
summed  his  conclusions  upon  the  imbruted  state  of  the  peas- 
antry in  an  English  village  into  one  sentence — "  Somebody 
deserves  to  be  whopped  for  all  this."  Who  ought  to  be  whopped 
here  ?  Like  every  other  dispute  of  which  I  know  any  thing, 
there  are  two  sides  to  the  question  as  to  where  the  fault  lies  for 
the  present  state  of  labor. 

I. 

Plainly,  labor's  first  fault  must  be  found  with  itself. 

(i.)  Its  inefficiency  and  Jack  of  interest  in  its  "work. — Leaving 
upon  one  side  the  class  of  skilled  labor,  a  large  proportion  of 
our  wage  workers  are  notoriously  inefficient.  In  the  most 
common  tasks,  one  has  to  watch  the  average  workingman  in 
order  to  prevent  his  bungling  a  job.  Hands  are  worth  little 


THKIFTLESSNESS.  5 

without  some  brains — as  in  the  work  done,  so  in  the  pay  won. 
Our  labor  is  quite  as  largely  uninterested — having  no  more 
heart  than  brains  back  of  the  hands.  Work  is  done  mechani- 
cally by  most  workingmen,  with  little  pride  in  doing  it  well, 
and  little  ambition  to  be  continually  doing  it  better. 

(2.)  Lack  of  identification  with  its  employers. — There  is  too 
commonly  as  little  sense  of  identity  with  the  employer's  inter- 
ests, or  of  concern  that  any  equivalent  in  work  should  be  ren- 
dered for  the  pay  received.  In  forms  irritating  beyond  ex- 
pression, employers  are  made  to  feel  that  their  employees  do  not 
in  the  least  mind  wasting  their  material,  injuring  their  property, 
and  blocking  their  business  in  the  most  critical  moments. 
Under  what  possible  system,  save  in  a  grievous  dearth  of 
laborers,  can  such  labor  be  well  off,  and  incompetence  and  in- 
difference draw  high  wages  ? 

(3.)  Thriftlessness. — Our  labor  is  for  the  most  part  very 
thriftless.  In  the  purchase  and  in  the  preparation  of  food — 
the  chief  item  of  expense  in  the  workingman's  family,  and 
that  wherein  economic  habits  count  for  most — men  and  wo- 
men are  alike  improvident.  The  art  of  making  money  go  the 
farthest  in  food  is  comparatively  unknown.  Workingmen  will 
turn  up  their  noses  at  the  fare  on  which  a  Carlyle  did  some  of 
the  finest  literary  work  of  our  century.  I  remember  some  time 
ago  speaking  to  one  of  our  butchers,  who  told  me  that  work- 
ingmen generally  ordered  his  best  cuts.  Now  an  ample 
supply  of  nutritious  food  is  certainly  essential  for  good 
work,  whether  of  brain  or  of  brawn.  The  advance  of  labor 
is  rightly  gauged,  among  other  ways,  by  its  increasing  con- 
sumption of  wheat  and  meat,  but  the  nutritiousness  of  meat  is 
not  necessarily  dependent  upon  its  being  the  finest  cut.  I 
should  like  to  see  all  men  eating  lamb  chops  and  porter- 
house steaks,  if  they  could  afford  it ;  but,  when  I  know  the 


6  THRIFTLESSNESS. 

average  wages  of  our  workingmen  and  the  cost  of  living 
on  the  simplest  possible  scale,  it  is  discouraging  to  learn  such 
a  fact  as  that  which  I  have  mentioned,  since  all  the  elements 
of  necessary  sustenance  can  be  had  in  so  much  cheaper  forms. 

The  French  artisans  and  peasants  could  give  our  people 
many  a  hint  how  to  make  money  go  the  farthest  in  food 
supplies.  Comparatively  few  of  our  workingmen's  wives  know 
much  about  real  economy  in  the  preparation  of  food.  Quite 
commonly  they  do  not  bake  at  all  at  home,  but  buy  bread, 
poor  in  quality  and  dear  in  price.  They  are,  for  the  most  part, 
ignorant  of  the  art  of  making  a  soup  which,  if  so  solid  a  figure 
could  be  applied  to  so  liquid  an  object,  might  be  the  piece  de 
resistance  of  a  dinner.  Most  of  their  processes,  as  I  have  learned 
of  them  in  this  city,  are  very  wasteful. 

As  in  their  food,  so  is  it  in  their  dress  and  other  ex- 
penses, and  notably  in  indulgences,  such  as  smoking,  drinking, 
excursioning,  etc.  Labor's  drink-bill  alone  is  enough  to  ac- 
count for  a  considerable  share  of  its  present  poverty.  In  this 
city  there  are  some  ten  thousand  licensed  drinking  places — ten 
miles  of  shops — one  to  every  115  inhabitants  or  to  every  thirty 
families.  New  York  fairly  represents  other  cities.  Nor  are 
our  towns  and  villages  much  better  in  this  respect.  I  know  of 
one  factory  village  where  there  is  a  liquor  shop  for  every  80  in- 
habitants, that  is,  for  every  sixteen  families  ;  and  nearly  all 
these  shops  are  thriving.  The  retail  liquor  trade  of  the  United 
States  in  1878  was  given  as  over  seven  hundred  millions  of 
dollars,  a  large  share  of  which  stands  for  the  wastage  of  our 
workingmen.  Three  dririks  and  three  cigars  a  day,  at  the  low- 
est prices,  five  cents  apiece,  would  represent  in  the  course  of  a 
year  over  $100,  or  one-third  of  the  average  wages  of  our  work- 
ingmen ;  that  is,  one  dollar  in  every  three  earned  thrown  away 
in  such  habits. 


LACK   OF  COMBINATION.  7 

The  reckless  multiplication  in  their  families  is  a  thrift- 
lessness  about  which  it  is  not  pleasant  to  say  much,  while  it 
cannot  be  ignored  in  the  study  of  this  problem. 

These  are  but  specimens  of  the  thriftlessness  of  the  average 
workingman.  The  same  fault  runs  through  his  life  in  many 
other  ways.  The  old-fashioned  thrift,  by  which  our  fathers 
and  mothers  climbed  the  lower  rounds  of  the  ladder,  and  which 
all  experience  shows  to  be  the  secret  of  success  in  the  first  and 
hardest  pull  of  life,  seems  quite  gone  out  of  vogue  ;  and  how 
without  it  men  are  to  forge  ahead  honestly  in  this  world — 
whatever  may  be  true  in  other  worlds — I  for  one  do  not  know. 
The  Franklin  type  of  the  genus  workingman  seems  wellnigh 
extinct  among  us. 

(4)  Its  lack  of  power  of  combination  and  of  wisdom  in  using 
its  power. — Labor  must  fault  itself  further,  on  the  ground 
of  its  lack  of  power  of  combination  and  of  its  defective  methods 
in  combination.  It  has  been  by  combination  that  the  middle 
class  has  arisen,  and  by  it  that  capital  has  so  wonderfully  in- 
creased. The  story  of  the  Middle  Ages,  familiar  to  us  all,  is 
the  story  of  the  rise  of  the  industrial  class  by  combination  in 
guilds.  Labor's  numbers,  now  a  hindrance,  might  thus  become 
a  help.  In  a  mob  men  trample  upon  each  other  ;  in  an  army 
they  brace  each  other  for  the  charge  of  victory. 

Trades  unions  represent  the  one  effective  form  of  combina- 
tion thus  far  won  by  American  labor.  Trades  unions  need  no 
timid  apologists.  Their  vindication  is  in  the  historic  tale  of 
the  successful  advances  which  they  have  won  for  workingmen. 
Called  into  being  to  defend  labor  against  legislation  in  the  in- 
terests of  capital,  in  the  days  when  to  ask  for  an  advance  in 
wages  led  to  workingmen's  being  thrown  into  prison,  they  have 
in  England  led  on  to  the  brilliant  series  of  reforms  which  mark 
our  century,  as  told  so  well  in  the  articles  by  Mr.  Howell  (The 


8  TRADES  UNIONS. — STRIKES. 

Nineteenth  Century  for  October,  1882)  and  by  Mr.  Harrison 
(The  Contemporary  Review  for  October,  1883).  Doubtless  they 
have  committed  plenty  of  follies,  and  are  still  capable  of  stupid 
tyrannies  that  only  succeed  in  handicapping  labor,  in  alienating 
capital,  and  in  checking  productivity — that  is,  in  lessening  the 
sum  total  of  divisible  wealth.  Such  actions  are  inevitable  in 
the  early  stages  of  combination  on  the  part  of  uneducated  men, 
feeling  a  new  sense  of  power,  and  striking  blindly  out  in  angry 
retaliation  for  real  or  fancied  injuries. 

Trades  unions  are  gradually,  however,  outgrowing  their 
crude  methods.  The  attempts,  such  as  we  have  seen  lately, 
of  great  corporations  to  break  them  up,  is  a  piece  of  despotism 
which  ought  to  receive  an  indignant  rebuke  from  the  people  at 
large.  Labor  must  combine,  just  as  capital  has  combined  in 
forming  these  very  corporations.  Labor's  only  way  of  defend- 
ing its  interests  as  a  class  is  through  combination.  It  is  the 
abuse,  and  not  the  use,  of  trades  unions  against  which  resist- 
ance should  be  made. 

The  chief  abuse  of  our  trades  unions  has  been  their  concen- 
tration of  attention  upon  the  organization  of  strikes. 

Strikes  seem  to  me,  in  our  present  stage  of  the  "  free  con- 
tract system,"  entirely  justifiable  when  they  are  really  neces- 
sary. Workingmen  have  the  right  to  combine  in  affixing  a 
price  at  which  they  wish  to  work.  The  supply  of  labor  and 
the  demand  for  goods,  in  the  absence  of  higher  considerations, 
will  settle  the  question  as  to  whether  they  can  get  the  increase. 
The  trying  features  of  this  method  of  reaching  a  result  are  in- 
cidental to  our  immature  industrial  system.  Strikes  have  had 
their  part  to  play  in  the  development  of  that  system.  We  note 
their  failures,  and  forget  their  successes  ;  but  they  have  had 
their  signal  successes,  and  have  won  substantial  advantages  for 
labor.  Their  chief  service,  however,  has  been  in  teaching 


STRIKES.  9 

combination  and  in  showing  labor  the  need  of  a  better  weapon 
by  which  to  act  than  the  strike  itself. 

The  strike  requires  long  practice  and  great  skill  to  wield  it 
well.  Practice  in  it  is  more  costly  than  the  experiments  at 
Woolwich.  Mr.  Bolles,  in  his  new  work  on  political  economy, 
gives  some  statistics  which  abundantly  illustrate  the  folly  of 
strikes  ;  although  he  only  gives  one  side  of  the  case,  namely, 
the  losses  which  fall  directly  upon  the  laborers  themselves. 
If  to  these  were  added  the  losses  of  capitalists,  the  aggregate 
would  become  colossal.  In  1829  the  Manchester  spinners 
struck,  and  lost  $1,250,000  in  wages  before  the  dispute  was  at 
an  end.  The  next  year  their  brethren  at  Ashton  and  Stayley- 
bridge  followed  their  example  in  striking  and  losing  $1,200,000. 
In  1833  the  builders  of  Manchester  forfeited  $360,000  by  vol- 
untary idleness.  In  1836  the  spinners  of  Preston  threw  away 
$286,000.  Eighteen  years  afterward,  their  successors,  seven- 
teen thousand  strong,  slowly  starved  through  thirty-six  weeks, 
and  paid  $1,200,000  for  the  privilege.  Heavy  losses  marked, 
too,  the  strike  of  the  London  builders  in  1860,  and  that  of  the 
tailors  in  1868,  and  that  again  of  the  northern  iron  workers  in 
1865.  The  strike  of  the  Belfast  linen  weavers,  which  was 
ended  a  few  weeks  since  by  the  mediation  of  the  British  Asso- 
ciation for  the  Advancement  of  Science,  cost  the  operatives 
$1,000,000. 

The  cost  of  strikes  is  expressible  only  in  an  aggregate  of  the 
savings  of  labor  consumed  in  idleness,  of  the  loss  to  the  pro- 
ductivity of  the  country,  of  the  disturbance  of  the  whole 
mechanism  of  exchange,  and  of  the  injury  wrought  upon  the 
delicate  social  organization  by  the  strain  thus  placed  upon  it. 
The  famous  Pittsburgh  strike  is  estimated  to  have  cost  the 
country  ten  millions  of  dollars.  When  so  costly  a  weapon  is 
found  to  miss  far  more  often  than  it  hits,  it  is  altogether  too  dear. 


10  ARBITRATION. 

Labor  ought  to  have  found  out  that  a  stunning  blow  between 
the  eyes  is  not  the  best  method  of  inducing  a  kindly  feeling 
and  a  just  judgment  on  the  part  of  capital.  It  ought  to  have 
found  out  that  the  strike  is  a  boomerang,  whose  hardest  blows 
are  often  dealt  backward  on  the  striker. 

Trades  unions  in  this  country  seem  to  me  to  be  gravely  at 
fault  in  clinging  to  such  an  obsolete  weapon.  They  should 
have  turned  their  attention  to  our  modern  improvements  upon 
this  bludgeon. 

Arbitration  is  a  far  cheaper  and  more  effective  instrument 
of  adjusting  differences  between  capital  and  labor — a  far 
more  likely  means  of  securing  a  fair  increase  of  wages.  It 
places  both  sides  to  the  controversy  in  an  amicable  mood,  and 
is  an  appeal  to  reason  and  conscience,  not  wholly  dead  in 
the  most  soulless  corporations.  It  costs  next  to  nothing.  It 
is  already  becoming  a  substitute  for  strikes  in  England, 
where  the  trades  unions  are  adopting  this  new  weapon.  Mr. 
Frederick  Harrison  writes,  in  his  address  before  the  late  trades 
union  congress  of  England,  as  follows  : 

There  are  no  men,  I  believe,  in  the  country  more  opposed  to  a  policy  of 
strikes — more  convinced  of  the  suffering  they  cause — than  the  officers  and 
managers  of  the  great  permanent  societies.  There  is  a  fine  passage  in  the 
admirable  report  before  you  :  "  The  measure  of  value  in  a  strong  union  lies 
not  so  much  in  the  conduct  of  successful  strikes  as  it  does  in  the  number  of 
disputes  its  moral  strength  prevents.  Their  influence  and  that  of  your  con- 
gress has  been  steadily  exerted  to  substitute  arbitration  for  strikes.  Even 
now  in  this  melancholy  dispute  [a  local  strike  of  some  magnitude],  it  is  the 
workmen  who  offer  and  the  employers  who  reject  arbitration.  Your  influ- 
ence in  favor  of  arbitration  is  shown  in  the  steady  progress  of  that  principle, 
and  in  the  steady  diminution  of  actual  strikes,  until  their  cost  does  not  reach 
to  one  per  cent,  [of  the  expenditures  of  the  unions]  ;  but  you  have  done  all 
that  you  can  do,  and  you  will  continue  to  do  all  you  can  to  insure  that  even 
this  small  percentage  may  be  spared  to  you,  and  that  arbitration  may  pre- 
vail in  all  labor  disputes. 


ENGLISH  TRADES  UNIONS,  '         1 1 

Trades  unions  ought,  among  us,  to  emulate  the  wisdom  of 
European  workingmen,  and  use  their  mechanism  to  organize 
forms  of  association  which  should  look  not  alone  to  winning 
higher  wages  but  to  making  the  most  of  existing  wages,  and  ul- 
timately to  leading  the  wage  system  into  a  higher  development. 
The  provident  features  of  the  English  trades  unions  are  com- 
monly overlooked,  and  yet  it  is  precisely  in  these  provident 
features  that  their  main  development  has  been  reached.  Mr. 
George  Howell  shows  that  a  number  of  societies,  which  he 
had  specially  studied,  had  spent  in  thirty  years  upward  of 
$19,000,000  through  their  various  relief  funds,  and  $1,269,455 
only  on  strikes.  Mr.  Harrison  speaks  of  seven  societies 
spending  in  one  year  (1879)  upward  of  $4,000,000  upon  their 
members  out  of  work.  He  shows  that  seven  of  the  great 
societies  spent  in  1882  less  than  two  per  cent,  of  their  income 
on  strikes  ;  and  states  that  99  per  cent,  of  union  funds  in  Eng- 
land "  have  been  expended  in  the  beneficent  work  of  support- 
ing workmen  in  bad  times,  in  laying  by  a  store  for  bad  times, 
and  in  saving  the  country  from  a  crisis  of  destitution  and  strife." 

Trades  unions  ought  to  be  doing  for  our  workingmen  what 
trades  unions  have  already  done  in  England.  Mr.  Harrison,  in 
the  address  already  quoted,  after  enumerating  some  of  the 
beneficial  actions  of  the  unions,  says  : 

Besides  many  others,  too  numerous  to  specify,  I  have  no  hesitation  in 
saying  that  the  labor  laws  passed  within  the  last  twelve  years  alone  form  a 
body  of  legislation  for  the  good  of  the  working  classes  of  this  country  such 
as  no  other  civilized  country  in  the  world  can  show.  Not  Germany,  where 
the  all-powerful  chancellor  has  now  taken  labor  under  his  special  protec- 
tion ;  not  even  France  or  the  United  States,  with  their  republic  and  man- 
hood suffrage.  It  cannot  be  denied  that  this  great  body  of  legislation 
is  to  a  great  degree  directly  due  to  the  efforts  of  this  congress. 

It  has  been  by  the  power  of  combination  among  the  work- 


12  OUR  UNIONS. 

ingmen,  developed  through  the  trades  unions,  that  this  long 
list  of  beneficent  legislation — factory  acts,  mines'  regulation 
acts,  education  acts,  tenant  right  acts,  employers'  liability  acts, 
acts  against  "truck,"  acts  against  cruelty  to  animals,  etc. — 
has  been  secured.  It  has  been  wrested  from  reluctant  parlia- 
ments by  the  manifestation  of  strength  on  the  part  of  the 
laboring  classes. 

In  comparison  with  this  brilliant  showing,  what  have  our 
trades  unions  done  to  affect  the  legislation  of  our  States  ?  That 
legislation  has  thus  far  been  notoriously  and  shamefully  in  the 
interests  of  one  class  as  against  another — in  the  interest  of 
capital  as  distinguished  from  labor.  We  have  had  bushels  of 
bills  for  the  furthering  of  capitalistic  schemes,  with  here  and 
there  a  grain  chucked  in  for  labor. 

Our  trades  unions  might  be  the  means  of  securing  one  of 
the  great  necessities  of  labor  in  this  country — accurate  and 
generally  diffused  information  concerning  the  state  of  the  labor 
market.  Were  there  any  thorough  combination  in  existence 
on  the  part  of  these  unions,  there  could  be  diffused  through 
the  great  centres  of  labor  in  the  East  regular  reports  of  the 
labor  market  in  the  different  local  centres  of  the  country,  such 
as  would  guide  workingmen  in  their  search  for  opportunities  of 
work.  Such  information  would  be  trusted  because  it  would 
come  from  their  own  class,  and  would  be  reliable  because  it 
would  be  given  from  those  on  the  spot ;  and  yet  our  trades 
unions,  so  far  as  I  know,  have  made  next  to  no  attempt,  even 
within  their  own"  peculiar  spheres,  to  give  to  their  members  any 
such  information  in  the'  hardest  of  times.  In  their  hands  is 
already  existent — needing  only  to  be  used — the  mechanism 
for  a  bureau  of  information  which  would  prove  of  incalculable 
value  to  our  workingmen. 

Another  action  that  our  labor  unions  might  take  in  the  inter- 


CO-OPERA  TION.  1 3 

est  of  the  workingmen  is  in  the  development  of  co-operation. 
The  story  of  European  co-operation  is  one  of  the  most  encour- 
aging tales  of  our  modern  industrial  world.  Germany,  for 
example,  had  in  1878  some  3,730  credit  societies  :  of  which 
806  reported  431,216  members  ;  advances  for  the  year,  in 
loans  to  their  members,  $375,000,000,  with  a  loss  of  one  mark 
to  every  416  thalers,  or  23^  cents  on  every  $297 — an  indication 
of  soundness  in  their  financial  operations  that  many  capital- 
istic corporations  might  well  envy.  The  rapid  growth  of  these 
societies  is  bringing  the  omnipotence  of  credit  to  the  aid  of 
the  workingman  in  Germany. 

We  have  within  the  past  decade  had  a  most  encouraging 
growth  of  a  somewhat  similar  form  of  co-operation  in  the 
building  and  loan  associations,  which  are  now  estimated  to 
number  probably  about  3,000  in  the  nation,  with  a  member- 
ship of  450,000,  and  an  aggregated  capital  of  $75,000,000. 

The  co-operative  stores  have  reached  a  wonderful  develop- 
ment in  England,  with  most  beneficent  results.  There  were 
765  stores  reporting  to  the  congress  in  1881,  which  showed 
aggregate  sales  of  $65,703,990,  with  profits  of  $435,000 ; 
while  Scotland  reported  226  stores  in  the  same  year,  represent- 
ing sales  of  $17,423,170,  and  profits  of  $113,665. 

Against  this  showing,  our  workingmen  have  comparatively 
little  to  offer.  We  have,  it  is  true,  had  a  great  deal  more 
experimenting  in  co-operative  distribution  than  is  ordinarily 
supposed.  Co-operative  stores  began  among  us  between  1830 
and  1840.  The  Workingmen's  Protective  Union  developed  a 
great  many  stores  at  this  time,  which  together  did  a  business 
in  their  best  days  ranging  from  $1,000,000  to  $2,000,000  per 
annum.  In  the  decade  i86o-'7o  there  was  an  extensive  revival 
of  co-operative  stores  ;  plans  for  wholesale  agencies  being 
discussed.  A  few  of  these  earlier  stores  still  live.  Two  great 


14  CO-OPERA  TION. 

national  orders  have  arisen,  seeking  to  build  up  co-operative 
stores,  among  other  aims. 

The  Grangers  had  in  1876  twenty  State  purchasing  agencies, 
three  of  which  did  a  business  annually  of  $200,000,  and  one 
of  which  did  an  annual  business  of  $1,000,000.  They  claimed 
to  have,  about  the  same  time,  five  steamboat  or  packet  lines, 
fifty  societies  for  shipping  goods,  thirty-two  grain  elevators,  and 
twenty-two  warehouses  for  storing  goods.  In  1876  one  hun- 
dred and  sixty  Grange  stores  were  recorded.  In  1879  it  was 
officially  stated  that  "  local  stores  are  in  successful  operation 
all  over  the  country." 

The  Sovereigns  of  Industry  also  developed  co-operative 
distribution  largely.  In  1877  President  Earle  reported  that 
"  ninety-four  councils,  selected  from  the  whole,  report  a  mem- 
bership of  7,273,  and  with  an  average  capital  of  $884  did  a 
business  last  year  of  $1,089,372.55.  It  is  safe  to  assume 
that  the  unreported  sales  will  swell  the  amount  to  at  least 
$3,000,000." 

There  have  been  numerous  stores  started  apart  from  these 
orders.  The  finest  success  won  is  that  of  the  Philadelphia  In- 
dustrial Co-operative  Society.  Starting  in  1875  with  one  store, 
it  has  now  six  stores.  Its  sales  for  the  quarter  ending  February 
18,  1882,  were  $5i,4T3.63.  A  considerable  increase  of  interest 
in  such  stores  marks  the  opening  of  our  decade.  Stores  are 
starting  up  in  various  parts  of  the  country.  The  Grangers 
claim  to  have  now  hundreds  of  co-operative  stores,  upon  the 
Rochdale  plan,  in  successful  operation.  Texas  alone  reports 
officially  (1881)  seventy-five  co-operative  societies  connected 
with  this  order. 

Yet  while  we  have  had  a  great  deal  more  co-operative  distri- 
bution than  is  usually  supposed,  we  have  had  nothing  compar- 
able with  the  splendid  development  in  England. 


CO-OP  ERA  TION.  1 5 

In  the  line  of  co-operative. production,  which  has  been  so 
successfully  essayed  in  France,  we  have  scarcely  a  handful  of 
real  successes. 

We  had  an  epoch  of  brilliant  enthusiasm  over  co-operative 
agriculture  in  1840-50,  but  little  now  remains  from  it.  One 
form  of  agricultural  co-operation,  a  lower  form,  has  been 
astonishingly  successful — the  cheese  factories  and  creameries. 
It  is  estimated  that  there  are  now  5,000  of  them  in  the  country. 
In  co-operative  manufactures,  we  have  had  many  experiments, 
from  1849  onward,  but  few  successes.  Massachusetts  reported 
twenty-five  co-operative  manufactures  in  1875.  All  of  them, 
however,  were  small  societies. 

Now,  co-operation  has  its  clearly  marked  limitations.  It  is 
of  itself  no  panacea  for  all  the  ills  that  labor  is  heir  to.  But  it 
can  ameliorate  some  of  the  worst  of  those  ills.  It  can  effect 
great  savings  for  our  workingmen,  and  can  secure  them  food 
and"  other  necessaries  of  the  best  quality.  If  nothing  further 
arises,  the  spread  of  co-operation  may  simply  induce  a  new 
form  of  competition  between  these  big  societies  ;  but  no  one 
can  study  the  history  of  the  movement  without  becoming  per- 
suaded that  there  is  a  moral  development  carried  on,  which 
will,  in  some  way  as  yet  not  seen  to  us,  lead  up  the  organiza- 
tion of  these  societies  into  some  higher  generalization,  securing 
harmony.  It  is  constantly  and  rightly  said  that  business  can 
never  dispense  with  that  which  makes  the  secret  of  capital's 
success  in  large  industry  and  trade — namely,  generalship.  Co- 
operation can,  it  is  admitted,  capitalize  labor  for  the  small  in- 
dustries, in  which  it  is  capable  of  making  workingmen  their  own 
employers  ;  but  it  is  said  that  it  can  never,  through  committees 
of  management,  carry  on  large  industries  or  trade.  I  can, 
however,  see  no  reason  why  hereafter  it  may  not  enable  large 
associations  to  hire  superior  directing  ability,  at  high  salaries, 


1 6  USES  OF  CO-OPERATION. 

just  as  paid  generals  give  to  republics  the  leadership  which 
kings  used  to  supply  to  monarchies.  There  are  in  the  savings 
banks  of  many  manufacturing  centres  in  our  country  amounts 
which  if  capitalized  would  place  the  workingmen  of  those 
towns  in  industrial  independence  ;  moneys  which,  in  some  in- 
stances, are  actually  furnishing  the  borrowed  capital  of  their 
own  employers.  In  such  towns  our  workingmen  have  saved 
enough  to  capitalize  their  labor,  but,  for  lack  of  the  power  of 
combination,  they  let  the  advantage  of  their  own  thrift  inure 
to  the  benefit  of  men  already  rich.  They  save  money  and  then 
loan  it  to  rich  men  to  use  in  hiring  them  to  work  on  wages, 
while  the  profits  go  to  the  borrowers  of  their  own  savings. 

But  the  chief  value  of  co-operation,  in  my  estimate,  is  its 
educating  power.  It  opens  for  labor  a  training  school  in  the 
science  and  art  of  association. 

Labor  once  effectively  united  could  win  its  dues,  whatever 
they  may  be.  The  difficulties  of  such  association  have  lam  in 
the  undeveloped  mental  and  moral  condition  of  the  rank  and 
file  of  the  hosts  of  labor.  The  history  of  the  various  attempts 
at  a  higher  association  among  our  workingmen  forms  a  sad 
story  of  ignorance,  suspicion,  timidity,  irresolution,  fickleness 
and  lack  of  self-control  ;  by  which  wise  plans  and  heroic  labors 
have  again  and  again  come  to  naught.  The  several  forms  of 
co-operation  present  the  best  means  of  educating  our  working- 
men  in  the  qualities  wherein  they  are  most  lacking,  and  thus 
of  fitting  them  for  that  action  of  self-help  which  must  prove 
the  first  step  to  their  salvation. 

Now,  of  this  effort  at  cb- operation  I  find  scarcely  any  trace 
in  the  trade  organizations  of  our  workingmen.  Trades  unions 
have  until  very  lately  passed  the  whole  subject  by  in  utter 
silence.  What  has  been  done  by  workingmen  in  this  country 
in  the  line  of  co-operation  has  been  done  outside  of  the  great 


POLITICAL  ACTION.  \J 

trade  associations,  which  form  the  natural  instrumentalities  for 
organizing  such  combination.  They  offer  the  mechanism,  the 
mutual  knowledge,  the  preliminary  training  in  habits  of  combi- 
nation, which  together  should  form  the  proper  conditions  for 
the  development  of  co-operation.  Is  it  not  a  singular  thing, 
considering  the  manifold  benefits  that  would  come  to  labor 
from  such  a  development,  that  the  attention  of  these  great  and 
powerful  organizations  has  not  heretofore  been  seriously  called 
to  this  matter  ?  It  is  a  hopeful  sign  that  two  of  our  later  trade 
organizations  avow  distinctively  in  their  platforms  the  princi- 
ple of  co-operation.  The  Central  Labor  Union  of  this  city  and 
the  Knights  of  Labor  both  profess  to  seek  the  development  of 
co-operation.  It  remains  to  be  seen  whether  there  will  be 
any  thing  more  than  -the  profession. 

Out  of  our  trades  unions,  by  combination  among  them,  there 
might  be  already  developed  on  our  soil  a  power  representing 
the  labor  element  of  the  country  which,  with  universal  fran- 
chise, would  be  practically  omnipotent.  Could  our  trades 
unions  enter  the  field  of  politics,  with  reference  to  measures  in 
the  interests  of  their  own  classes  ;  measures  justifiable,  rTeces- 
sary,  and  on  which  reasonable  minds  could  be  readily  con- 
vinced ;  not  many  elections  would  be  held  in  our  various  States 
before  these  reforms  would  be  accomplished.  Is  there  not  a 
certain  aspect  of  childishness  on  the  part  of  so  vast  and  power- 
ful a  body  of  men  as  is  represented  by  those  trades  unions,  in 
their  pitiful  appeals  to  government  for  the  help  which  they 
have  it  already  in  their  power  to  force  from  government  ? 

The  story  of  such  attempts  as  have  already  been  made  in 
this  direction  is  one  of  a  sad  and  discouraging  nature  to  all 
who  feel  the  gravity  of  this  problem.  Again  and  again  great 
organizations  have  arisen  on  our  soil,  seeking  to  combine  our 
trade  associations  and  promising  the  millennium  to  labor,  only 


1 8  SELF-HELP  FIRST. 

to  find  within  a  few  years  suspicion,  distrust  and  jealousy  eat- 
ing the  heart  out  of  the  order,  and  disintegration  following 
rapidly  as  a  natural  consequence.  The  time  must  soon  come, 
let  us  hope,  when  the  lesson  of  these  experiences  will  have 
been  learned. 

These  are  some  of  the  salient  faults  of  labor — faults  which 
are  patent  to  all  dispassionate  observers.  The  first  step  to  a 
better  state  of  things  lies  through  the  correction  of  these  faults. 
Whatever  other  factors  enter  into  the  problem,  this  is  the  factor 
which  it  concerns  labor  to  look  after,  if  it  would  reach  the 
equation  of  the  good  time  coming.  No  reconstruction  of 
society  can  avail  for  incompetent,  indifferent,  thriftless  men, 
who  cannot  work  together.  Self-help  must  precede  all  other 
help.  Dreamers  may  picture  Utopias,  where  all  our  present 
laws  are  suspended,  and  demagogues  may  cover  up  the  dis- 
agreeable facts  of  labor's  own  responsibility  for  its  pitiful  con- 
dition, but  sensible  workingmen  will  remember  that,  as  Renan 
told  his  countrymen  after  the  Franco-Prussian  war,  '*  the  first 
duty  is  to  face  the  facts  of  the  situation."  There  are  no  royal 
roads  to  an  honest  mastery  of  fortune,  though  there  seem  to 
be  plenty  of  by-ways  to  dishonest  success.  Nature  is  a  hard 
school-mistress.  She  allows  no  makeshifts  for  the  discipline 
of  hard  work  and  of  self-denial,  no  substitutes  for  the  culture 
of  all  the  strengthful  qualities.  Her  American  school  for 
workers  is  not  as  yet  overcrowded.  The  rightful  order  of 
society  is  not  submerged  on  our  shores.  There  are  there- 
wards  of  merit  for  those  who  will  work  and  wait.  No  man  of 
average  intelligence  need*s  to  suffer  in  our  country,  if  he  has 
clear  grit  in  him.  "  The  stone  that  is  fit  for  the  wall,"  as  the 
Spanish  proverb  runs,  "  will  not  be  left  in  the  way." 


WHY  LABOR  IS  INEFFICIENT.  19 

II. 

BUT — for  there  is  a  very  large  "  but  "  in  the  case — when  all 
this  is  said,  only  the  thorough-going  doctrinaire  will  fail  to  see 
that  merely  half  the  case  has  been  presented.  There  is  a 
shallow  optimism  which,  from  the  heights  of  prosperity,  throws 
all  the  blame  of  labor's  sufferings  on  labor's  own  broad  shoul- 
ders ;  which  steels  the  heart  of  society  against  the  worker  be- 
cause of  his  patent  faults,  and  closes  the  hand  against  all  help, 
while  it  sings  the  gospel  of  the  Gradgrinds — "  As  it  was  and 
ever  shall  be.  Amen." 

Labor  itself  is  not  wholly  responsible  for  its  own  faults. 
These  faults  spring  largely  out  of  the  defective  social  condi- 
tions amid  which  the  workingman  finds  himself  placed.  Be- 
fore we  proceed  to  administer  to  him  the  Avhole  measure  of 
the  "whopping"  due  for  his  low  estate,  we  should  better  look 
back  of  him,  to  see  why  it  is  that  he  is  as  he  is. 

(i.)  Some  causes  of  labor  s  inefficiency. — The  inefficiency  of 
labor  is  by  no  means  the  fault  of  the  individual  laborer  alone. 
Heredity  has  bankrupted  him  before  lie  started  on  his  career. 
His  parents  were  probably  as  inefficient  as  he  is — and  most 
likely  their  parents  also.  One  who  sees  much  of  the  lower 
grades  of  labor  ceases  to  wonder  why  children  turn  out  worth- 
less, knowing  what  the  parents  were.  General  Francis  A. 
Walker,  in  opening  the  Manufacturers'  and  Mechanics'  Insti- 
tute in  Boston  lately,  said  : 

There  is  a  great  virtue  in  the  inherited  industrial  aptitudes  and  instincts 
of  the  people.  You  can  no  more  make  a  first-class  dyer  or  a  first-class 
machinist  in  one  generation  than  you  can  in  one  generation  make  a  Cossack 
horseman  or  a  Tartar  herdsman.  Artisans  are  born,  not  made. 

Our  incompetents  may  plead  that  they  were  not  born  com- 
petent. It  does  not  readily  appear  what  we  are  going  to  do 


2O  WHY  LABOR  IS  INEFFICIENT. 

about  this  working  of  heredity  against  labor,  except  as  by  the 
slow  and  gradual  improvement  of  mankind  these  low  strata  of 
existences  are  lifted  to  a  higher  plane.  Meanwhile  we  must 
blame  less  harshly  and  work  a  little  more  earnestly  to  better 
the  human  stock. 

The  environment  of  labor  handicaps  still  further  this  organic 
deficiency.  In  most  of  our  great  cities  the  homes  of  the  work- 
ingmen  are  shockingly  unwholesome  ;  unsunned,  badly  drained, 
overcrowded.  The  tenements  of  New  York  are  alone  enough 
to  take  the  life  out  of  labor.  City  factories  often  are  not 
much  better.  The  foods  sold  in  the  poorer  sections  of  our 
cities — meat,  bread,  milk,  etc., — are  defectively  nutritious, 
even  where  they  are  not  positively  harmful.  The  sanitary  con- 
ditions are  thus  against  labor. 

This  could  be  largely  rectified  by  the  state  and  city  authori- 
ties, and  ought  to  be  rectified  in  simple  justice  to  society  at 
large,  which  is  now  so  heavily  burdened  by  the  manifold  evils 
bred  under  such  conditions.  Government  guards  carefully 
the  rights  both  of  land  and  capital,  by  an  immense  amount  of 
legislation  and  administration.  Has  not  labor  a  fair  claim  to 
an  equal  solicitude  on  the  part  of  the  state  ?  Health  is  the 
laborer's  source  of  wealth,  but  it  is  by  no  means  as  carefully 
looked  after  as  are  the  resources  of  the  other  factors  of  pro- 
duction. It  is  only  within  the  last  three  years  that  we  have 
had  in  New  York  a  satisfactory  tenement-house  law,  or  a  fair 
administration  of  any  law  bearing  on  this  evil.  There  ought 
to  be  the  exercise  of  some  such  large  wisdom  as  that  which 
led  the  city  of  Glasgow  to  spend  $7,000,000  in  reconstructing 
three  thousand  of  the  worst  tenements  of  that  city,  with  a  con- 
sequent reduction  of  the  death  rate  from  54  per  thousand  to 
29  per  thousand,  and  with  a  corresponding  decrease  of  pau- 
perism and  crime. 


WHY  LABOR  IS  INEFFICIENT.  21 

To  this  end  municipal  government  should  be  taken  out  of 
party  politics  and  made  the  corporation  business  that  it  is  in  : 
German  cities. 

We  have  in  none  of  the  States  of  our  Union  any  such  legisla- 
tion as  that  of  the  thorough  system  of  factory  laws  in  England, 
and  we  ought  to  supply  the  lack  promptly.  Whatever  may  be 
said  as  to  interference  on  the  part  of  legislation  with  the  rights 
of  capital,  the  sufficient  answer  is  that  the  whole  advance  of 
society  has  been  a  constant  interference  on  the  part  of  legisla- 
tion with  the  merely  natural  action  of  the  law  of  supply  and 
demand  ;  and  that  only  thus  has  England,  for  example, 
secured  the  immense  amelioration  in  the  condition  of  the  prob- 
lem of  labor  and  capital  which  marks  her  state  to-day. 

It  can  be  said  also  in  this  connection  that  if  government 
has  one  business  more  peculiarly  its  own  than  another  it  is  to 
look  after  the  class  that  most  needs  looking  after  ;  and  that 
not  simply  in  the  interest  of  the  class  itself,  which  would 
rarely  supply  a  basis  of  governmental  interference,  but  in  the 
interests  of  society  at  large — of  the  state  itself.  The  state's 
first  concern  is  to  see  her  citizens  healthful,  vigorous,  wealth- 
producing  factors  ;  and  to  this  end  bad  sanitary  conditions, 
which  undermine  the  "  health-capital  "  of  labor,  imperatively 
demand  correction. 

The  deeper  seated  the  roots  of  labor's  inefficiency,  in  hered- 
ity and  environment,  the  greater  the  need  for  an  education  that 
will  develop  whatever  potencies  may  lie  latent.  Inefficiency 
will  rarely  correct  itself.  Superior  ability  must  train  it  into 
better  power.  Where  is  there  any  proper  provision  for  such 
an  education  ? 

Inefficient  parents  can  hardly  be  expected  to  teach  their 
children  better  skill  than  they  themselves  have  won.  The  old 
system  of  apprenticeship  has  almost  completely  died  out,  partly 


22  INDUSTRIAL  EDUCATION, 

owing  to  the  stupid  policy  of  trades  unions,  and  partly  owing 
to  the  change  going  on  in  most  of  the  old  handicrafts,  through 
the  introduction  of  the  factory  system  and  of  mechanism.  No 
other  system  of  industrial  training  has  come  generally  into  use 
among  us  to  take  the  place  of  home  training  and  of  appren- 
ticeship. The  churches  have  of  late  years  been  carrying  on 
certain  forms  of  industrial  education  in  many  places,  but  the 
work  has  only  been,  for  the  most  part,  rudimental.  Here  and 
there  they  are  now  adopting  kitchen  gardens  (as  introductory 
to  domestic  service),  sewing  schools,  and  in  some  places  classes 
for  training  boys  in  manual  handicrafts.  Philanthropic  soci- 
eties have  been  essaying  the  simpler  forms  of  industrial  educa- 
tion, chiefly  for  girls — as,  notably,  in  the  industrial  schools  of 
the  Children's  Aid  Society  of  this  city.  In  a  few  cities,  through 
individual  or  voluntary  associative  action,  art  industrial  educa- 
tion has  been  considerably  developed,  as,  for  example,  in  Phil- 
adelphia and  Boston  ;  and  our  own  city  has  within  a  few  years 
received  fine  illustrations  of  what  individual  wealth  can  do  in 
the  line  of  industrial  education,  in  the  schools  of  Mr.  Auchmuty 
and  in  the  noble  Cooper  Union. 

State  governments  and  our  national  government  have  for  a 
number  of  years  been  fostering  certain  branches  of  industrial 
education,  chiefly  in  the  line  of  agriculture.  The  late  report  of 
the  Bureau  of  Education  upon  industrial  education  presents  a 
very  encouraging  summary  of  what  is  thus  being  done  under 
the  guidance  of  the  State.  It  reports  concerning  forty-three 
colleges,  which  are  aided  by  state  grants  to  give  agricultural 
and  mechanical  training,  besides  referring  to  a  large  number 
of  technical  departments  in  other  colleges,  industrial  schools, 
evening  classes  for  such  instruction,  etc.  Probably  the  finest 
example  of  industrial  education  that  the  country  possesses  is 
found  in  the  Hampton  schools  in  Virginia.  Of  attempts,  how- 


INDUSTRIAL  EDUCATION.  2$ 

ever,  to  combine  general  and  intellectual  education  with  prac- 
tical training  and  handicrafts  we  have  few  examples.  The 
Hampton  schools,  already  alluded  to,  present  one  of  the  best. 
Professor  Adler's  school  in  this  city  is  very  interesting  in  this 
respect. 

Our  common  schools  have  until  lately  passed  by  the  whole 
field  of  practical  education.  Drawing  is  at  last  being  generally 
introduced,  and  sewing  is  also  being  introduced  to  a  small  ex- 
tent, I  believe,  especially  in  New  England.  But  the  schools 
which  are  supposed  to  be  intended  for  the  mass  of  the  people, 
and  which  are  supplied  at  the  public  cost,  have  made  next  to 
no  provision  for  the  practical  training  of  boys  and  girls  to 
become  self-supporting  men  and  women — wealth-producing 
citizens  ;  while  the  whole  curriculum  of  the  school  system 
tends  to  a  disproportionate  intellectuality,  and  to  an  alienation 
from  all  manual  labor. 

It  requires  no  argument,  I  think,  to  satisfy  all  but  doctrin- 
aires that  a  great  mass  of  inefficient  labor  in  a  nation  demands 
of  its  cultured  and  wealthy  classes,  of  its  churches  and  philan- 
thropists, and  of  its  government  an  ample  provision  by  which 
it  may  be  trained  to  efficiency.  Charity  dictates  this  as  the 
wisest  help.  Self-interest  suggests  it  to  capital  for  its  own  in- 
creasing productivity.  The  true  function  of  the  state  calls  for 
this  task,  in  the  discharge  of  its  duty  to  society  at  large,  and  in 
order  to  the  exemption  of  society  from  the  present  onerous 
burden  of  taxation  imposed  by  poverty  and  crime. 

There  is  room  in  our  country  now  for  all  these  agencies. 
Churches  can  do  no  better  work  than  by  adding  to  their  Sun- 
day schools  of  moral  and  religious  instruction  industrial 
schools,  which  will  train  their  boys  and  girls  to  habits  of  effi- 
cient toil — a  toil  wherein  shall  be  the  best  safeguards  against  the 
temptations  that  infest  life  and  that  peculiarly  appeal  to  the  poor. 


24  KIND  ERG  A  R  TEN. 

Individuals  can  find  no  more  promising  field  for  their 
efforts  of  philanthropy  than  in  organizing  and  endowing 
such  schools.  Our  manufacturers  might  well  study,  in  their 
own  interests,  the  example  of  the  French  firms  which  are  suc- 
cessfully carrying  on,  in  connection  with  their  factories,  schools 
for  technical  training.  The  story  of  Mulhouse,  one  of  the 
towns  of  Alsace,  is  a  brilliant  homily  to  all  employers  of  labor. 

Above  all,  it  seems  to  me  that  it  is  bounden  on  the  state  to 
provide  such  training  and  education.  The  necessity  of  the 
state's  entering  the  educational  field  is  disputed  by  no  one  ; 
but  if  it  is  to  educate  children  at  the  public  cost,  it  is  bound,  I 
think,  to  so  educate  its  wards  that  they  shall  return  to  society 
the  taxation  imposed  for  their  education.  Its  justification  in 
becoming  school-master  lies  in  the  necessity  of  making,  out  of 
the  raw  material  of  life,  citizens  who  shall  be  productive  fac- 
tors in  the  national  wealth  and  conservators  of  its  order.  If, 
therefore,  it  is  justified  in  teaching  the  elementary  branches  of 
education,  if  it  is  justified  in  adding  to  those  elementary 
branches  departments  that  may  be  considered  as  luxuries,  how 
much  more  is  it  justified  in  training  the  powers  by  which  self- 
support  shall  be  won  and  wealth  shall  be  added  to  society  ? 

What  it  might  do,  and  ought  to  do,  as  it  seems  to  me,  is,  first 
of  all,  to  lay  the  foundation  of  a  complete  education,  which 
shall  include  the  bodily  powers,  as  well  as  the  mental  powers, 
by  establishing  the  kindergarten  system  as  the  pre-primary  de- 
partment of  our  public  schools.  While  there  is  no  technical 
training  in  any  handicraft  in  the  kindergarten — as,  indeed, 
there  could  not  well  be,  owing  to  the  age  of  the  children,  and 
should  not  be,  since  it  looks  simply  to  the  symmetrical  opening 
of  all  the  powers  of  the  human  being — there  is  none  the  less  an 
habitual  training  of  eye  and  hand,  of  the  taste  and  of  the 
imagination,  and  of  the  originating  power,  which  goes  far  to 


TRADE   SCHOOLS.  2$ 

create  a  love  of  manual  labor  and  to  develop  skill  in  it.  Its 
clay  modeling  and  block-building  and  stick  and  strip  combina- 
tions teach  and  train  in  the  elements  which  lie  at  the  basis  of 
art  industry.  No  better  beginning  than  such  an  education  can 
be  conceived.  It  inspires  in  the  child  mind  that  joy  in  work 
itself  and  that  pride  in  doing  work  well  which  labor  so  sadly 
needs  to-day.  Upon  'this  basis  the  state  should  rear  a  care- 
fully graduated  course  of  instruction  and  training,  calculated 
to  develop  manual  skill  as  an  essential  element  of  a  complete 
education  and  as  a  general  preparation  for  technical  trade  edu- 
cation. The  means  for  this  fall  into  the  line  of  the  specialist, 
and  need  not  be  entered  upon  here. 

Finally,  it  should  in  some  way,  though  I  am  not  myself  clear 
what  way  would  be  best,  foster  the  development  of  trade 
schools,  either  by  supplying  them  as  annexes  to  its  general 
course,  or  by  granting  subventions  for  the  founding  of  training 
schools,  or  at  least  by  the  publishing  of  documents  that  would 
call  the  attention  of  manufacturers  to  the  need  and  to  the  pos- 
sibility of  such  schools,  and  that  would  illustrate  what  is 
already  being  done  in  this  line  in  the  Old  World.  The  story  of 
any  of  the  successful  training  schools  of  Paris  would  be  a 
revelation  to  most  of  our  manufacturers.  There  is  the  JEcole 
frofessionale,  for  example,  a  printing  establishment,  under  the 
management  of  Messrs.  Chaix  et  Cie.  This  school  has  some 
thirty  apprentices  connected  with  it.  The  apprenticeship  lasts 
four  years.  The  wages  are  paid  on  a  rising  scale.  The  teach- 
ing lays  its  foundation  in  a  special  primary  course  for  those 
whose  previous  schooling  has  been  insufficient.  It  then  adds  a 
technical  course,  which  covers  grammar  and  composition,  the 
reading  of  proofs  and  correcting  for  the  press,  the  study  of 
different  kinds  of  type  and  engraving,  and  the  reading  and 
composing  of  English,  German,  Latin  and  Greek ;  in  the  two 


26  WHY  LABOR  IS  UNINTERESTED. 

latter  cases,  from  a  purely  typographical  point  of  view,  without 
any  attempt  to  understand  or  translate.  Lastly  it  builds  a  sup- 
plemental course,  which  includes  the  history  of  printing,  simple 
notions  of  economics,  a  little  mechanics  and  physics,  and  a 
little  smattering  of  chemistry,  dealing  with  the  materials  they 
will  have  hereafter  to  employ,  such  as  acids,  oxides,  oils,  car- 
bons, soda,  etc.;  the  result  of  which  on  the  general  intelligence 
and  interest  of  the  workingmen  employed  in  such  an  establish- 
ment must  be  striking,  and  the  return  from  which  to  the 
manufacturer  in  increased  efficiency  must  be  equally  note- 
worthy.* 

That  such  efforts  to  encourage  industrial  education  would 
pay  our  government  is  best  seen  in  the  example  of  England. 
The  International  Exhibition  of  1851  revealed  to  England  its 
complete  inferiority  to  several  continental  countries  in  art  indus- 
tries, and  the  cause  of  that  inferiority — the  absence  of  skilled 
workmen.  The  government  at  once  began  to  study  the  prob- 
lem, and  out  of  this  study  arose  the  Kensington  Museum,  with 
its  art  schools,  and  similar  institutions  throughout  the  country, 
which  have  already  made  quick  and  gratifying  returns  in  the 
improvement  of  the  national  art  industries,  and  in  the  vast  en- 
richment of  the  trade  growing  therefrom. 

(2)  Some  causes  of  labor's  lack  of  interest. — Concerning 
labor's  lack  of  interest  in  its  work  and  its  failure  to  identify 
itself  with  capital  we  must  also  look  beyond  labor  itself  to 
find  the  full  responsibility  of  this  evil. 

The  whole  condition  of  industrial  labor  has  changed  in  our 
country.  Contrast  the  state  of  such  labor  a  century  ago  with 
what  it  is  now.  Then  the  handicraftsman  worked  in  his  own 
home,  surrounded  by  his  family,  upon  a  task  whose  processes 
he  had  completely  mastered.  He  had  thus  a  sense  of  interest 
*  Contemporary  Review,  September,  1880. 


HOW  CAPITAL   CAN  CURE  IT.  2/ 

and  pride  in  his  work  being  well  and  thoroughly  done.  Now 
he  leaves  his  home  early  and  returns  to  it  late,  working  during 
the  day  in  a  huge  factory  with  several  hundred  other  men. 
The  subdivision  of  labor  gives  him  only  a  bit  of  the  whole 
process  to  do,  where  the  work  is  still  done  by  hand,  whether  it 
be  the  making  of  a  shoe  or  of  a  piano.  He  cannot  be  master 
of  a  craft,  but  only  master  of  a  fragment  of  the  craft.  He  can- 
not have  the  pleasure  or  pride  of  the  old-time  workman,  for  he 
makes  nothing.  He  sees  no  complete  product  of  his  skill 
growing  into  finished  shape  in  his  hands.  What  zest  can 
there  be  in  the  toil  of  this  bit  of  manhood  ?  Steam  machinery 
is  slowly  taking  out  of  his  hands  even  this  fragment  of  intelligent 
work,  and  he  is  set  at  feeding  and  watching  the  great  machine 
which  has  been  endowed  with  the  brains  that  once  were  in  the 
human  toiler.  Man  is  reduced  to  being  the  tender  upon  a 
steel  automaton,  which  thinks  and  plans  and  combines  with 
marvellous  power,  leaving  him  only  the  task  of  supplying  it 
with  the  raw  material,  and  of  oiling  and  cleansing  it. 

Some  few  machines  require  a  skill  and  judgment  to  guide 
them  proportioned  to  their  astonishing  capacities,  and  for  the 
elect  workmen  who  manage  them  there  is  a  new  sense  of  the 
pleasure  of  power. 

But,  for  the  most  part,  mechanism  takes  the  life  out  of  labor, 
as  the  handicraft  becomes  the  manufacture,  or,  more  properly, 
the  machino-factvLro. ;  and  the  problem  of  to-day  is  how  to  keep 
up  the  interest  of  labor  in  its  daily  task,  from  which  the  zest 
has  been  stolen. 

Manufacturers  ought  to  see  this  problem,  and  hasten  to 
solve  it.  Those  who  profit  most  by  the  present  factory  system 
ought,  in  all  justice,  to  be  held  responsible  to  those  who  suffer 
most  from  it.  They  ought  to  be  held  morally  bound  to  make 
up  to  them  in  some  way  the  interest  in  life  that  has  gone  out 


28  MODEL  ESTABLISHMENTS. 

with  the  old  handicrafts.  They  could  interest  their  hands  out 
of  the  working  hours,  and  in  ways  that  would  give  them  a  new 
interest  in  their  working  hours. 

Let  me  give  two  examples  of  this  wise  action  in  Europe. 
The  Messrs.  Faber  (of  the  celebrated  pencil  company),  on 
their  premises  at  Stein,  Bavaria,  have  established  kindergartens, 
schools,  churches,  libraries,  archer  clubs  and  other  institutions 
for  the  education  and  recreation  of  their  men,  while  they  sup- 
ply provisions,  etc.,  at  wholesale  prices.  They  sell  land  in  lots 
and  build  houses  for  the  men,  which  the  men  pay  for  through 
a  term  of  years.  They  have  founded  a  savings  bank  and  a 
hospital,  and  pension  their  workmen  in  old  age. 

The  famous  Bon  Marchd  establishment,  in  Paris,  presents  a 
fine  example  of  what  may  be  done  to  make  life  cheerier  for 
employees.  Three  thousand  hands  have  their  meals  in  the 
building.  Concerts  are  given  them,  and  lessons  in  English, 
German,  instrumental  and  vocal  music  and  fencing.  The 
clerks  have  an  amusement-room,  with  billiard  tables,  chess, 
checkers  and  other  games.  The  women  clerks  have  a  parlor 
to  themselves,  in  which  they  find  various  games,  a  piano  and 
other  means  of  recreation.  A  physician  is  employed  by  the 
store,  and  his  services  are  free.  All  are  pecuniarly  interested 
in  the  store,  receiving  a  small  commission  on  every  article  sold 
and  delivered,  and,  after  a  certain  number  of  years,  each  per- 
son receives  an  interest  in  the  house,  which  increases  yearly. 

Let  me  give  three  illustrations  from  our  own  soil  of  what 
can  be  done  by  employers  to  render  life  more  attractive  to 
their  men.  A  pamphlet  by  B.  G.  Northrop,  Secretary  of  the 
Connecticut  Board  of  Education,  thus  describes  two  villages 
that  ought  to  be  famous. 

One  of  these  ' '  models  "  is  the  silk  factory  of  the  Cheney  Brothers,  in 
South  Manchester,  Conn. ,  by  far  the  largest  and  most  successful  factory  of 


MODEL  ESTABLISHMENTS.  29 

the  kind  in  the  world,  making  over  25,000  yards  of  ribbons  and  broad  silks 
a  day.  This  business,  started  here  by  the  Cheney  family  in  1836,  has 
steadily  grown  in  extent  and  prosperity  to  the  present  time.  The  factory 
village  covers  about  eight  hundred  acres  of  land  and  includes  some  two 
hundred  houses.  A  fine  lawn,  laid  out  with  winding  concrete  walks  and 
adorned  with  shrubs  and  flowers,  fronts  the  mills,  and  usually  each  of  the 
houses.  No  fence  or  visibly  dividing  line  separates  the  front  yards  from  the 
roads.  The  Cheneys  have  encouraged  their  hands  to  build  and  own  their 
homesteads,  and  to  this  end  furnish  the  land,  and  loan  money  for  building 
at  a  low  figure,  with  a  "  liquor  reservation  "  in  the  interest  of  temperance, 
and  with  the  understanding  that  all  houses  shall  be  on  a  plan  provided  or 
approved  by  their  architect,  and  that  all  shall  be  neatly  painted  some  neutral 
tint.  Not  a  house  in  glaring  white  here  offends  the  eye.  The  beautiful 
grounds  of  the  Cheney  mansions,  of  the  operatives,  and  of  the  factories  all 
present  the  appearance  of  an  extended  park,  and  give  a  look  of  refinement, 
kindliness,  and  good  neighborhood  to  the  whole  village,  which  is  like  a  well- 
kept  garden.  No  private  yard  is  left  in  an  untidy  state.  No  debris  or 
rubbish  is  seen  around  or  near  any  dwelling.  There  is  evidently  a  public 
sentiment  in  favor  of  neatness  and  order  that  pervades  the  entire  community 
and  allows  no  dirty  nooks  to  be  found.  Creeping  vines  cover  "  the  office  " 
and  some  of  the  factory  buildings  and  dwellings.  No  block  houses  are 
found  here.  The  cottages  stand  apart  and  vary  in  style,  giving  an  individu- 
ality to  each  place.  A  capacious  aqueduct  carries  water  to  every  house. 
This  village  seems  like  a  community  in  the  best  sense  of  the  term,  with 
common  interests,  pursuits  and  sympathies.  The  providing  of  a  large  and 
commodious  lecture  hall,  costing  $50,000,  together  with  interesting  and  in- 
structive lectures  and  entertainments  and  a  free  library  and  reading-room, 
solely  by  the  Cheney  Brothers,  shows  their  intelligent  and  liberal  methods 
of  promoting  the  well-being  and  content  of  their  employes.  The  hands 
highly  appreciate  the  liberality  of  their  employers,  and  feel  a  manifest  inter- 
est in  their  work  and  a  pride  in  the  place.  Hence  strikes  and  alienation 
between  capital  and  labor  are  here  unknown. 

The  other  model  manufacturing  village  is  that  of  the  Fairbanks  Company, 
at  St.  Johnsbury,  Vt.  There  is  the  largest  manufactory  of  scales  in  the 
world,  employing  in  the  factory  and  branch  departments  elsewhere,  over 
one  thousand  men,  and  manufacturing  over  60,000  scales  annually,  the  sales 
now  amounting  to  over  $2,000,000  a  year. 

There  is  a  superior  class  of  workmen  in  this  establishment.     All  are 


3<D  MODEL  ESTABLISHMENTS. 

males.  Their  work  is  proof  of  skill.  Their  looks  and  conversation  indicate 
intelligence.  They  are  mostly  Americans,  and  come  from  the  surrounding 
towns.  More  than  half  of  them  are  married,  and  settled  here  as  permanent 
residents,  interested  in  the  schools  and  in  all  that  relates  to  the  prosperity 
of  the  place.  Many  of  them  own  their  houses,  with  spacious  grounds  for 
yard  and  garden,  and  often  a  barn  for  the  poultry  and  cow.  These  houses 
are  pleasing  in  their  exterior,  neatly  furnished,  and  many  of  them  supplied 
with  pianos  and  tapestry  or  Brussels  carpets.  The  town  is  managed  on 
temperance  principles,  and  drunkenness,  disorder,  and  strife  among  the 
hands  are  almost  unknown.  Most  of  them  are  church-goers,  many  of  them 
church  members. 

There  has  evidently  been  mutual  sympathy  and  interest  between  employer 
and  employed.  The  senior  (Governor)  Fairbanks  used  to  say  to  the  men, 
"  You  should  always  come  to  me  as  to  a  father."  He  maintained  relations 
of  kindness  with  them,  visiting  the  sick,  helping  the  needy,  counselling  the 
erring,  encouraging  their  thrift,  enjoining  habits  of  economy.  He  taught 
them  that  it  was  their  duty  and  interest  to  "  lay  up  something  every  month," 
and  that  the  best  way  to  rise  in  the  social  scale  was  to  unite  economy  with 
increasing  wages.  He  himself  both  preached  and  practised  economy.  Yet 
his  benefactions  were  munificent.  The  fact  that  so  many  of  the  workmen 
are  "  fore-handed,"  besides  owning  their  homesteads,  is  due  to  his  teaching 
and  example.  The  worth  and  dignity  of  work  he  illustrated  in  theory  and 
practice.  The  notion  that  labor  was  menial,  or  that  the  tools  of  trade  or 
farm  were  badges  of  servility,  he  despised.  His  sons  worked  in  the  shop, 
and  thoroughly  learned  the  trade.  Many  workmen  have  been  here  from 
twenty  to  over  forty  years. 

Years  ago  the  men  were  aided  in  forming  and  sustaining  a  lyceum,  and 
liberal  prizes  were  offered  for  the  best  essays  read.  Recently  Horace  Fair- 
banks has  founded  a  library,  and  opened  a  large  reading-room,  free  to  all. 
The  Athenaeum,  containing  the  library,  reading-room,  and  also  a  spacious 
lecture-hall,  is  an  elegant  structure,  95  by  40  feet,  two  stories  high.  The 
books,  now  numbering  nearly  10,000  volumes,  are  choice  and  costly  ;  230 
volumes  have  been  drawn  in  a  single  day.  In  the  reading-room,  besides  a 
good  supply  of  American  periodicals,  daily,  weekly,  and  quarterly,  I  noticed 
on  the  tables  many  European  journals,  including  4  English  quarterlies,  6 
London  weeklies,  and  10  monthlies.  The  library  and  reading-room  are 
open  every  week-day  and  evening  except  Wednesday  evening,  when  all  are 
invited  to  attend  the  weekly  "  lecture,"  which  is  held  at  the  same  hour  in 


BALTIMORE  AND   OHIO  R.  R.  31 

all  the  churches.  Having  visited  nearly  every  town  of  Massachusetts  and 
Connecticut,  and  travelled  widely  i.i  this  country,  I  have  nowhere  found  in 
a  village  of  this  size  an  art  gallery  so  costly  and  so  well  supplied  with  paint- 
ing and  statuary,  a  reading-room  so  inviting,  and  a  library  so  choice  and 
excellent  as  this. 

Thaddeus  Fairbanks,  one  of  the  three  founders  of  the  scale  factory,  has 
liberally  endowed  a  large  and  flourishing  academy,  which  promises  to  be- 
come the  "  Williston  Seminary"  for  Northeastern  Vermont. 

These  various  provisions  for  the  improvement,  happiness,  and  prosperity 
of  this  people,  coupled  with  liberality  and  fairness  in  daily  business  inter- 
course, explain  the  absence  of  discontent  and  the  uniform  sympathy,  good- 
feeling  and  harmony  which  prevail. 

The  Baltimore  and  Ohio  Railroad  Company  has  given  a  fine 
example  to  our  great  railroad  corporations  of  the  true  way  of 
dealing  with  employees.  Hon.  S.  B.  Elkins,  in  his  oration  on 
"  The  Industrial  Question  in  the  United  States,"  writes  as  fol- 
lows of  this  corporation  : 

In  1882  the  late  John  W.  Garrett  caused  to  be  incorporated  the  Balti- 
more and  Ohio  Employees'  Relief  Association,  which  will  remain,  perhaps, 
the  most  enduring  monument  to  his  memory.  The  company  contributed 
$100,000  towards  endowing  the  association,  and  contributes  yearly  about 
$50,000  towards  maintaining  it.  The  employees,  19,000  of  whom  belong 
to  the  association,  also  contribute  a  small  percentage  of  their  earnings. 
The  association  has  secured  hospital  privileges  in  all  the  cities  and  towns 
along  the  line  ;  organized  a  medical  corps  ;  founded  a  library  for  the  use 
of  employees  ;  established  a  system  of  pensions  for  every  disabled  employee, 
and  organized  a  loan  and  building  department,  by  which  already  the  em- 
ployees have  been  aided  to  build  300  homes  along  the  lines  of  the  company, 
under  the  best  sanitary  supervision. 

Not  a  few  of  our  manufacturers  are  already  opening  their 
eyes  to  these  facts  of  the  industrial  problem,  and  with  far- 
seeing  generosity  and  human  brotherliness  that  will,  according 
to  the  eternal  laws,  return  even  the  good  things  of  this  life 
unto  them,  they  are  providing  their  workingmen  with  libraries, 


32  WHY  LABOR  IS  NOT  LOYAL. 

reading-rooms  and  halls  for  lectures  and  for  entertainments. 
They  are  encouraging  and  stimulating  the  formation  of  liter- 
ary and  debating  societies,  bands,  clubs,  and  such  other  asso- 
ciations as  give  social  fellowship  and  mental  interest.  All  this 
can  be  done  at  comparatively  small  cost.  The  men  in  the  em- 
ploy of  a  great  establishment  can  be  taught  a  new  interest  in 
their  tasks  as  they  learn  to  understand  its  processes  and  the 
relation  of  these  processes  to  society  at  large,  which  can  easily 
be  done  by  talks  and  lectures.  Such  work  as  this  demands 
the  leadership  and  the  organizing  power  which  the  employer  can 
best  furnish.  At  the  last  session  of  the  Social  Science  Asso- 
ciation an  interesting  paper  sketched  some  of  these  efforts. 
In  what  wiser  way  could  our  wealthy  manufacturers  use  a  por- 
tion of  the  money  won  by  the  labor  which  has  exhausted  its 
own  interest  in  its  task  ? 

Such  personal  interest  on  the  part  of  employers  in  their 
employees  leads  up  to  a  clew  to  that  other  phase  of  the  uninter- 
estedness  of  labor — its  lack  of  identification  with  the  welfare 
of  capital,  of  any  feeling  of  loyalty  toward  the  capitalist.  How 
can  any  thing  else  be  fairly  expected  in  our  present  state  of 
things  from  the  average  workingman,  under  the  average  em- 
ployer ?  I  emphasize  the  "  average,"  because  there  are 
employees  of  exceptional  intelligence  and  honor,  as  there  are 
employers  of  exceptional  conscientiousness,  anxious  to  do 
fairly  by  their  men.  The  received  political  economy  has 
taught  the  average  workingman  that  the  relations  of  capital 
and  labor  are  those  of  hostile  interests  ;  that  profits  and  wages 
are  in  an  inverse  ratio  ;  that  the  symbol  of  the  factory  is 
a  see-saw,  on  which  capital  goes  up  as  labor  goes  down.  With 
affairs  in  their  present  condition,  there  is,  unfortunately,  too 
much  ground  for  this  action,  as  the  workingman  sees. 

Mr.  Carroll  D.  Wright,   in  the   i4th  annual  report  of  the 


FACTORY  FEUDALISM.  33 

Massachusetts  Bureau  of  Labor  (1883),  shows  that  in  1875  the 
percentage  of  wages  paid  on  the  value  of  production,  in  over 
2,000  establishments,  was  24.68  ;  and  that  in  1880  it  was  20.23. 
This  means  that  the  workingmen's  share  of  the  returns  of  their 
own  labor,  so  far  from  increasing,  has  decreased  one  sixth  in 
five  years. 

The  workingman  is  disposed  to  believe,  in  the  light  of  such 
figures,  that  the  large  wealth  accumulated  by  his  employer 
represents,  over  and  above  a  fair  profit,  the  increased  wages 
out  of  which  he^ilaturally  regards  himself  as  being  mulcted. 
He  may  be  'thick-Tieaded,  but  he  can  see  that  in  such  a  see-saw 
of  profits  versus  wages  the  superior  power  of  capital  has  the 
odds  all  in  its  favor.  He  learns  to  regard  the  whole  state  of 
the  industrial  world  as  one  in  which  might  makes  right,  and 
in  which  feebleness  is  the  synonym  of  fault. 

How,  in  the  name  of  all  that  is  reasonable,  can  the  average 
man  take  much  interest  in  his  employer  or  identify  himself 
with  that  employer  under  such  a  state  of  things — a  state  of 
things  which  the  economy  sanctioned  by  the  employer  has 
taught  him  to  regard  as  the  natural  and  inevitable  social  order. 

This  alienation  is  aggravated  by  the  whole  character  of  our 
modern  industrial  system. 

The  factory  system  is  a  new  feudalism,  in  which  no  master 
deals  directly  with  his  hands.  Superintendents,  managers  and 
"  bosses  "  stand  between  him  and  them.  He  does  not  know 
them — they  do  not  know  him.  The  old  common  feeling  is 
disappearing.  And — this  is  a  significant  point  that  it  behooves 
workingmen  to  notice — the  intermediaries  are  generally  work- 
ingmen  who  have  risen  out  of  the  ranks  of  manual  labor,  and 
who  in  this  rise  have  lost  all  fellow-feeling  with  their  old  com- 
rades, without  gaining  the  larger  sympathy  with  humanity 
which  often  comes  from  culture.  The  hardest  men  upon 


34  ASSOCIATED  ACTION. 

workingmen  are  ex-workingmen.  It  is  stated,  on  what  seems 
to  be  good  authority,  that  the  general  superintendent  of  the 
great  corporation  which  lately  has  shown  so  hard  a  feeling 
toward  its  operatives  when  on  strike,  was  himself,  only  ten  years 
ago,  a  telegraph  operator. 

A  further  aggravating  feature  of  this  problem  is  the  increas- 
ing tendency  of  capital  to  associated  action.  What  little 
knowledge  of  his  employees  or  sympathy  with  them  the  indi- 
vidual manufacturer  might  have  is  wholly  lost  in  the  case  of 
the  corporation.  To  the  stockholders  of  a  great  joint-stock 
company,  many  of  whom  are  never  on  the  spot,  the  hundreds 
of  laborers  employed  by  the  company  are  simply  "  hands  " — 
as  to  whose  possession  of  hearts  or  minds  or  souls  the  by-laws 
rarely  take  cognizance.  Here  there  is  plainly  a  case  where 
capital — the  party  of  brains  and  wealth — the  head  of  the 
industrial  association,  should  lead  off  in  a  systematic  effort  to 
renew,  as  far  as  may  be,  the  old  human  tie,  for  which  no  sub- 
stitute has  ever  been  devised. 

To  conciliate  the  interests  of  the  classes,  and  identify  labor 
with  capital,  individual  employers  must  re-establish  personal 
relationships  between  themselves  and  their  men.  What  might 
be  done  in  this  way,  and  how,  this  being  done,  the  present 
alienation  of  feeling  on  the  part  of  our  workingmen  would 
largely  disappear,  must  be  evident  to  any  one  who  has  watched 
some  of  the  beautiful  exemplifications  of  this  relationship 
which  have  already  grown  into  being  on  our  shores.  I  know 
of  one  large  manufacturer  in  a  city  not  a  hundred  miles  from 
this,  who  started  to  enter  the  ministry  as  a  young  man,  but 
found  to  his  intense  disappointment  that  he  had  no  aptitude 
for  the  work  of  a  preacher,  and  turned  his  attention,  on  the 
insistant  advice  of  those  dearest  to  him,  to  active  business.  He 
took  up  the  business  which  his  father  had  left  him  at  his  death, 


CAPTAINS  OF  INDUSTRY.  35 

and  had  left  largely  involved.  His  first  task  was  to  pay  off, 
dollar  for  dollar,  all  the  debts  which  his  father  had  bequeathed 
him,  although  in  most  instances  they  had  been  compromised  by 
the  creditors.  He  then  threw  the  energy  of  his  being  into  the 
development  of  the  business,  and,  in  the  course  of  a  few  years, 
put  it  at  the  forefront  of  that  line  in  his  native  city.  Into  his 
business  he  breathed  the  spirit  of  love  to  God  and  man  which 
had  moved  him  originally  to  take  up  the  work  of  the  ministry. 
He  felt  himself  ordained  to  be  what  Carlyle  would  have  called 
a  "captain  of  industry."  From  the  start  he  established  per- 
sonal, human,  living  relationships  with  his  men.  He  taught 
them  by  deed  rather  than  by  word  to  consider  him  their 
friend.  He  was  in  the  habit  of  calling  in  upon  their  families 
in  a  social  and  respecting  way.  In  all  their  troubles  and  ad- 
versities he  trained  them  to  counsel  with  him,  and  gave  them 
the  advantage  of  his  riper  judgment  and  larger  vision.  In 
cases  of  exigency  his  means  were  at  their  service  in  the  way  of 
loans  to  tide  them  over  the  hard  times.  His  friends  have  seen, 
more  than  once,  coming  from  his  private  office,  some  of  the 
hard-fisted  men  of  toil  in  his  employ,  with  tears  streaming 
down  their  faces.  He  had  called  them  into  his  office  on  hear- 
ing of  certain  bad  habits  into  which  they  had  fallen,  and  so 
impressive  had  been  his  talk  with  them  that  they  left  his  pres- 
ence with  the  most  earnest  resolves  to  do  better  in  the  future. 
The  result  of  such  a  relationship  has  been  that  during  some 
fifteen  years  of  the  management  of  this  large  business  he  has 
rarely  changed  his  men,  and  while  strikes  have  abounded  around 
him  he  has  never  known  a  strike. 

I  hold  in  my  possession  a  letter  from  one  of  the  leading  iron 
manufacturers  in  this  country,  who,  in  response  to  an  appeal 
for  participation  in  a  charity  of  this  city,  gave  answer  that  it 
had  been  a  practice  of  the  firm  to  invest  a  certain  portion  of 


36  INDUSTRIAL  PARTNERSHIP. 

their  profits  in  developing  the  comforts  of  their  workingmen,  and 
that  they  were  obliged  to  limit  their  desire  to  give  in  charity  in 
order  that  they  might  he  able  to  build  homes,  club-rooms,  read- 
ing-rooms, and  the  other  institutions  of  a  really  civilized  com- 
munity in  their  work-village.  These  are  examples,  in  our  own 
country,  of  what  might  be  done. 

One  of  the  most  beautiful  models  that  I  know  of  in  modern 
history  is  furnished  by  the  town  to  which  reference  has  already 
been  made — the  town  of  Mulhouse  ;  where,  after  some  thirty 
years,  the  spirit  of  brotherliness  has  so  entered  into  the  rela- 
tionships of  capital  and  labor  that  a  firm  would  be  disreputable 
which  there  attempted  to  carry  on  business  as  business  is  ordi- 
narily done  here.  All  the  manufacturers  plan  out,  organize, 
and  carry  on  what  to  most  of  us  would  seem  impossible  schemes 
for  the  amelioration  and  uplifting  of  the  condition  of  their 
working  people.  No  one  wonders  that,  as  he  walks  through 
the  town  which  his  large-hearted  philanthropy  imbued  with 
this  fine  spirit,  the  workingmen  salute  the  originator  of  these 
schemes  as  "  Father  Peter." 

In  addition  to  this  personal,  human  relationship,  capital 
might  and  should,  in  all  justice  and  humanity,  identify  the 
pecuniary  interests  of  labor  with  its  own  interests.  What  is 
known  as  industrial  partnership  is  a  practical  solution  of  this 
branch  of  the  problem.  The  principle  is  simply  that  of  giving 
labor  a  pecuniary  interest  in  the  profits  of  the  establishment 
pro  rata  to  its  own  wages.  A  bonus  is  set  on  frugality  and  in- 
dustry and  conscientiousness  of  work,  by  making  the  hands 
small  partners  in  the  concern. 

Industrial  partnership  has  been  much  experimented  upon  in 
England,  and  still  more  largely  in  France.  The  fullest  exem- 
plification of  the  principle  of  which  I  know  is  furnished  in  the 
establishment  of  M.  Godin,  at  Guise.  He  had  been  an  early 


INDUSTRIAL   PARTNERSHIP.  37 

disciple  of  Fourier.  Into  his  large  establishment — which  em- 
braces a  number  of  industries,  such  as  iron,  copper,  etc.,  and 
which  employs  some  1,500  people — he  has  introduced  this 
principle.  A  regular  association  was  formed  between  himself 
and  his  employees.  The  accounts  of  the  concern  are  duly  laid 
before  them.  They  are  open  to  the  inspection  of  a  committee 
appointed  by  the  working-men.  All  is  done  openly  and  above 
board.  They  know  the  profits  of  the  concern  and  their  own 
share  in  those  profits.  In  addition  to  this  general  principle  of 
industrial  partnership  he  adds  that  paternal  care  which  lies  in 
the  power  of  a  philanthropic  employer.  Buildings  on  a  gigan- 
tic scale  have  been  reared  for  the  employees  ;  stores  are  opened, 
in  which  the  best  produce  is  supplied  to  them  at  the  lowest 
rates  ;  reading-rooms,  a  huge  hall  for  meetings,  festivals,  etc., 
are  furnished  ;  nurseries,  schools,  and  kindergartens  are  pro- 
vided for  them,  and  in  every  possible  way  their  life  is  made 
pleasant  and  comfortable.  The  declaration  of  principles 
which  opens  the  articles  of  association  is  nobly  religious  :  "  To 
worship  God,  the  Supreme  Being,  the  source  of  all  life.  To 
hallow  life  itself.  To  promote  the  advent  of  justice  among 
men." 

One  of  the  latest  and  most  satisfactory  exemplifications  of 
this  principle  in  our  own  country  is  found  in  the  establishment 
of  the  Messrs.  Hazard,  of  Peacedale,  R.  I.  A  few  years  ago 
the  firm  presented  their  employees,  as  a  Christmas  gift,  with  a 
carefully  drawn  up  scheme  whereby  they  were  to  receive 
a  certain  share  of  the  profits  for  the  new  year,  if  those 
profits  rose  over  the  average  of  the  past  five  years.  The  divi- 
sion was  to  be  made/r0  rata  to  the  wages  they  received.  The 
first  year  there  was  no  dividend  to  be  paid  according  to  this 
scheme.  The  second  year  a  dividend  of  5  per  cent,  on  the 
gross  wages  was  declared,  amounting  to  $5,824.40.  The  third 


38  ARBITRA  TION. 

year  a  dividend  of  5  per  cent,  on  the  gross  wages  was  declared, 
and  the  fourth  year  a  dividend  of  3  per  cent.  For  that  year, 
owing  to  the  high  price  of  wool  and  other  additional  expenses, 
the  profits  were  cut  down,  but  there  were  still  $3,760.14  to  be 
returned  as  a  dividend  to  the  members  of  the  company.  Mr. 
Hazard  writes  concerning  the  experiment  :  "  We  believe  that 
we  can  see  an  increase  of  care  and  diligence.  As  yet  this 
increase  is  not  so  great  as  it  should  be,  but  the  object  to  be 
taken  into  account  in  encouraging  conscientious  work  is  so  im- 
portant to  the  moral  as  well  as  the  material  good  of  the  com- 
munity, that  we  decided  to  persevere."  In  a  letter  explaining 
more  fully  his  experience,  he  declares  that  if  no  other  good 
had  resulted  from  the  experiment  it  had  demonstrated  its 
capacity  to  act  as  a  "  lightning-rod,"  removing  the  electricity 
from  the  air  and  establishing  the  conditions  of  peace. 

Our  manufacturers  might  well  carve  over  their  doors  the 
legend  of  one  of  the  greatest  shops  of  Paris  :  "  The  house  for 
each,  and  all  for  the  house."  Corporations  can  apply  this 
principle  as  well  as  individuals,  and  they  need  to  apply  it  more 
than  individuals.  Some  of  the  great  railroad  corporations  in 
France  regularly  insure  their  men's  lives  from  accident.  If 
this  had  been  done  on  our  great  trunk  lines  we  might  not  have 
had  the  severe  strike  of  a  few  years  back.  If  the  Western 
Union  Telegraph  Company  had  established  any  such  human 
bond  between  the  corporation  and  the  operatives,  would  they 
have  had  the  severe  strike  that  recently  occurred,  which  must 
have  largely  crippled  their  resources  while  it  has  irritated  the 
whole  country  ?  When  will  capital  learn  that  an  ounce  of 
prevention  is  better  than  a  pound  of  cure  ? 

Capital  may  fairly  be  expected,  moreover,  to  lead  off  in  en- 
deavoring to  establish  s6me  better  means  of  adjusting  differ- 
ences than  the  strike.  Arbitration  is  less  advanced  in  this 


ARBITRA  TION.  39 

country  than  in  most  of  the  countries  of  Europe.  The  forms 
of  it  are  various  in  the  Old  World. 

In  England  it  is  mainly  voluntary.  Arbitration  committees 
or  boards  are  frequently  appointed  by  employers  and  their 
employees,  which  act  together  in  cases  of  dispute.  In  some 
centres  there  are  standing  boards  of  arbitration.  In  France 
there  is  an  interesting  development  of  this  system,  which,  fol- 
lowing the  genius  of  the  country,  is  largely  official. 

The  Conseil  des  Prudhommes  is  a  court  of  equity  appointed 
by  the  state,  through  the  local  authorities.  Each  court  con- 
sists of  one  manufacturer  and  one  workingman.  It  sits  daily, 
and  is  a  court  of  appeal  in  cases  of  dispute.  Its  machinery  is 
very  simple.  In  a  case  of  dispute  a  complaint  is  lodged  with 
the  conseil,  say,  by  a  workingman.  A  note  is  sent  to  his  em- 
ployer, requesting  his  attendance  on  a  certain  day.  Both 
parties  to  the  dispute  then  appear  before  the  judges.  Each 
states  his  own  case,  and  the  quick  good  sense  of  the  judges, 
who  for  the  most  part  learn  to  see  together,  irrespective  of  their 
class  affiliations,  generally  reaches  to  the  heart  of  the  difficulty. 
The  advice  which  is  tendered  is  for  the  most  part  accepted, 
and  the  difficulty  is  composed  without  further  trouble.  If, 
however,  one  of  the  parties  proves  fractious,  the  law  backs  the 
decision  of  the  court,  and  the  penalty  that  it  enjoins  is  enforced. 
So  general  is  the  respect  felt  for  these  courts,  apparently,  that 
their  decisions  are  mostly  acquiesced  in  without  a  resort  to  the 
final  proceedings.  Here  is  a  machinery  simple,  easy  of  appli- 
cation, involving  the  slightest  possible  expense,  which  is  ever 
ready  at  hand  and  has  no  cumbrous  routine  of  law  to  be  put 
in  operation  ;  providing  an  instrumentality  that  proves  entirely 
sufficient. 

Why  could  not  our  national  government  spread  broadcast 
through  the  country  information  concerning  such  simple  de- 


4O  NO  EDUCATION  IN  THRIFT. 

vices  for  the  conciliation  of  labor  and  capital,  and  our  State 
or  city  governments,  if  need  be,  take  the  lead  in  instituting 
them  ?  It  is  often  the  case  that  nothing  more  is  needed  than 
knowledge  of  an  adequate  instrumentality  of  justice  in  order 
to  lead  to  a  resort  to  that  instrumentality,  and  thus  there  is  re- 
lief of  the  situation  which  otherwise  would  be  one  of  great 
strain.  And  should  more  be  needed,  would  it  endanger  the 
fabric  of  civilization  and  overthrow  the  gods  of  the  economists 
if  a  city  like  this  should  appoint  an  arbitration  board,  com- 
posed of  men  whose  names  carried  the  weight  of  reputation  for 
judgment  and  justice  ?  Back  of  such  a  board,  public  opinion 
would  gather  with  a  force  commanding  corporations  and 
unions  alike  to  resort  to  it  before  embroiling  the  community 
in  strife. 

(3.)  Thriftlessness  of  labor  from  lack  of  education  in  habits 
of  saving. — The  thriftlessness  of  the  mass  of  unskilled  labor 
brings  other  classes  under  responsibility  besides  labor  itself. 
Thrift  is  a  habit  into  which  men  and  women  must  needs  be 
trained.  Since  it  is  the  basic  virtue,  according  to  political 
economy,  one  would  have  supposed  that  an  industrial  society 
would  have  been  at  pains  to  see  that  it  was  systematically  cul- 
tivated in  the  people's  schools.  But  among  all  the  isms  and 
ologies  of  our  common  schools,  what  help  is  ever  given  to  chil- 
dren in  the  formation  of  habits  of  thrift  ?  In  some  of  the  de- 
partments of  France  it  is  taught  as  a  duty,  and,  for  its  culture, 
saving  funds  are  formed  among  the  scholars  ;  and  the  teachers 
train  the  children  in  the  habit  of  laying  something  by  weekly 
from  their  little  spending  money.  Some  such  plan  as  this  has 
been  in  successful  operation  in  many  reform  schools  of  Eng- 
land. Can  it  not  in  some  form  be  engrafted  upon  our  common- 
school  system  ? 

For  adults  we  have  provided   savings   banks,  which   have 


POSTAL   SAVINGS  BANKS.  41 

proved  an  invaluable  means  of  developing  the  habit  of  thrift. 
They  are,  however,  not  plentiful  enough  in  many  portions  of 
the  country,  and  in  large  sections  of  the  land  they  have  be- 
come to  the  workingmen  "  suspect,"  through  the  great  number 
of  failures  that  have  occurred  in  their  management.  Nearly 
all  the  Third  Avenue  savings  banks  failed  between  1873— '77. 
What  is  needed  for  the  country  at  large  is  some  system  whereby 
the  poorest  man,  in  the  most  isolated  portion  of  the  country, 
may  feel  that  he  has  within  reach  an  institution  into  which 
may  be  placed  his  little  savings,  and  where  he  may  feel  as 
secure  of  them  as  the  capitalist  now  feels  when  he  puts  behind 
his  thousands  of  dollars  the  credit  ot  the  nation.  In  other 
words,  we  need  the  introduction  of  the  postal  savings 
banks  which  in  England,  for  example,  have  within  a  few  years 
developed  so  largely  the  habit  of  thrift  among  the  poorer 
classes. 

"  There  are  now  upward  of  7,800  of  the  post-offices  in  the 
United  Kingdom  open,  commonly  from  nine  in  the  morning 
until  six,  and  on  Saturday  until  nine,  in  the  evening,  for  the 
receipt  and  repayment  of  deposits.  One  shilling  is  the  smallest 
sum  that  can  be  deposited.  No  one  can  deposit  more  than 
thirty  pounds  in  one  year,  or  have  to  his  credit  more  than  one 
hundred  and  fifty  pounds,  exclusive  of  interest.  Interest  at 
two  and  a  half  per  cent,  is  paid,  beginning  the  first  of  the 
month  following  the  deposit  and  stopping  the  last  of  the  month 
preceding  the  withdrawal,  but  no  interest  is  paid  on  any  sum 
that  is  less  than  a  pound  or  not  a  multiple  of  a  pound.  The 
methods  used  for  the  receipt  and  repayment  of  deposits  are 
simple  and  take  but  little  of  the  depositor's  time.  The  abso- 
lute secrecy  which  is  '  enforced  upon  all  officers  connected  with 
the  banks  '  leads  many  workingmen  to  deposit  their  savings 
with  the  government,  who  could  not  be  induced  to  deposit 


42  POSTAL   SA  VINGS  BANKS. 

their  money  with  private  or  ordinary  savings  banks,  where 
their  employers  might  find  out  that  they  were  laying  by  money. 
From  December  31,  1874,  to  December  31,  1884,  the  number 
of  depositors  increased  from  1,668,733  to  3,333,675,  and  the 
deposits  from  23,157,469  pounds  to  44,773,773  pounds."  Two 
hundred  and  fifty-seven  thousand  accounts  were  opened  in 
1882,  with  deposits  of  $200,000,000.  Italy,  Austria,  Belgium, 
Denmark,  Norway  and  Sweden  have  followed  the  example  of 
England.  Canada,  our  neighbor,  has  also  developed  this  use- 
ful institution.  "  In  July,  1884,  there  were  343  savings  bank 
offices  and  66,682  depositors.  Of  the  depositors,  1,400,  having 
$4,722,000  on  deposit,  were  supposed  to  be  farmers  ;  7,850, 
having  $1,422,000,  mechanics  ;  4,270,  having  $7 24,000,  laborers; 
12,000,  with  $2,350,000  deposits,  married  women  ;  and  10,500, 
with  deposits  amounting  to  $1,275,000,  single  women."  * 

The  post-office  is  everywhere,  and  back  of  the  post-office  is 
the  government,  and  back  of  the  government  are  the  whole 
resources  of  the  people.  This  is  the  security  that  our  poor 
people  demand.  These  are  the  facilities  that  they  need.  We 
all  remember  that  a  few  years  ago,  when  ten-dollar  bonds  were 
issued  by  the  United  States  Government,  the  demand  for  them 
was  so  eager  as  to  lead  to  the  formation  of  long  lines  of  appli- 
cants, waiting  for  hours  at  the  places  of  issue.  The  experiment 
needs  to  be  carried  still  further. 

Not  only  does  society  give  little  help  in  the  formation  of 
early  habits  of  thrift,  and  an  insufficient  help  to  the  formation 
of  these  habits  in  later  years,  but  in  many  ways  thriftlessness 
and  its  kindred  vices  are  directly  encouraged  in  the  poor  by 
the  general  conditions  of  the  social  and  business  world,  and  by 
our  defective  methods  of  government. 

*  "Postal  Savings  Banks,)'  by  Professor  D.  B.  King. — Popular  Science 
Monthly,  December,  1885. 


INDUSTRIAL  DEPRESSIONS,  43 

The  broad  fact  of  the  great  poverty  of  the  large  class  of  un- 
skilled labor  in  this  country  is  itself  the  prime  factor  in  the 
thriftlessness  of  that  class.  Nothing  is  more  clearly  established 
in  political  economy  than  the  truth  that  habits  of  thrift  are 
only  begun  when  labor  rises  above  the  level  of  despair.  While 
men  feel  that  there  is  no  use  in  endeavoring  to  better  their 
condition  they  will  not  make  much  effort.  While  they  feel 
that  all  their  resources  will  be  unavailing  to  procure  them  in- 
dependence and  comfort  they  will  be  apt  to  sink  those  re- 
sources, small  as  they  are,  in  immediate  indulgence.  Provision 
for  the  future  is  made  at  the  cost  of  the  present  only  when  the 
future  opens  promisingly. 

The  intermittent  character  of  our  modern  industrial  system 
forms  a  strong  discouragement  to  thrift.  With  steady  work  all 
the  year  round,  year  in  and  year  out,  men  soon  come  to  calcu- 
late their  possible  savings  and  to  lay 'by  for  the  future.  Fixity 
of  income  is  a  great  stimulus  to  thrift.  But  panics  come,  em- 
ployers fail,  mills  are  closed,  slackening  demand  in  the  market 
leads  employers  to  declare  a  reduction  of  wages,  and,  in  its  re- 
sistance, to  find  excuse  for  a  lock-out ;  and,  in  these  and 
other  ways,  the  workmen  are  so  frequently  thrown  out  of  em- 
ployment that  they  grow  used  to  seeing  their  scanty  savings 
consumed  in  idle  times,  and  their  families  no  further  ahead 
from  their  efforts  of  self-denial. 

Now,  of  course,  the  existence  of  such  a  state  of  things  should 
be  an  additional  reason  for  thrift,  but  unfortunately  human 
nature  is  so  constituted  that  little  effort  at  self-denial  is  likely 
to  be  made  with  such  a  prospect.  It  is  the  hope  of  thereby 
gaining  a  more  comfortable  future  which  nerves  men  to  do 
without  a  present  good.  Destroy  this  hope  of  getting  ahead 
and  the  energy  of  saving  relaxes,  as  all  history  shows. 

The  remedy  for  this  intermittent  character  of  work  is  not 


44  INCREASE  OF  PRICES  TAXING  LABOR. 

plainly  at  hand.  The  experiment  proposed  in  France  as  a 
make-shift  for  periods  of  idleness  was  not  fairly  tried.  It  is 
an  easy  thing  to  heap  ridicule  upon  government  work- 
shops in  time  of  distress,  but  the  experiment  of  the 
ateliers  nationaux  appears  to  have  been  so  conducted,  purposely, 
in  France  as  to  bring  opprobrium  and  ridicule  upon  it.  Even 
if  successful,  such  amelioratives  would  be  no  cure  for  the 
chronic  disorder  of  our  industrial  system.  The  permanent 
escape  from  these  periodic  spells  of  enforced  idleness  is  not 
likely  to  be  found  until  the  anarchy  of  our  present  planless 
production  is  corrected  by  some  rational  co-ordination  of  the 
various  industries,  so  that  there  may  be  a  production  propor- 
tioned to  the  probable  demand  of  a  given  year.  While  econo- 
mists are  studying  this  question  of  over-production,  could  not 
our  great  manufacturing  associations  be  taking  some 
preliminary  steps  towards' the  solution  of  this  grave  problem, 
if  only  by  discussing  the  possibilities  of  the  situation  ? 

The  increase  of  prices  which  high  authorities  affirm  to  be  going 
on  in  many  of  the  necessities  of  life  is  imposing  a  constantly 
growing  burden  upon  the  resources  of  labor.  Mr.  Carroll  D. 
Wright,  in  the  Princeton  Review  for  July,  1882,  says  that  from 
1860  to  1878  there  was  an  average  jncrease  of  wages  of  24.4 
per  cent,  and  of  prices  of  14.9  per  cent.  ;  that  from  1878  to 
December,  1881,  there  was  an  annual  average  increase  of  wages 
of  6.9,  and  in  prices  an  average  increase  of  21  per  cent.  ;  and 
that  covering  the  whole  period  of  twenty-one  years  there  was 
an  average  increase  in  wages  of  31.2  per  cent.,  and  in  prices 
of  41.3  per  cent.  In  other  words,  between  1860  and  1881  our 
workingmen  had  suffered  a  reduction  of  ten  per  cent,  on  the 
purchasing  power  of  wages.  With  tendencies  at  work  thus 
forcing  prices  up,  the  increase  of  wages,  where  it  may  be  found, 
is  relatively  outdistanced.  There  is,  I  know,  another  side 


OVER  TAXATION.  45 

to  this  picture,  according  to  which  prices  are  now  generally 
falling,  but  few  men  are  better  capable  of  forming  a  trust- 
worthy judgment  hereon  than  Mr.  Wright. 

The  resources  o>~  labor,  such  as  they  are,  are  still  further 
burdened  by  the  needless  taxation  which  is  imposed,  directly  by 
the  government  and  indirectly  by  the  monopolies  of  the  country. 
This  taxation  claims  annually  what  would  otherwise  make  a 
very  substantial  margin  for  possible  savings  on  the  part  of  the 
average  workin^man.  I  do  not  wish  to  enter  the  mazes  of  tariff 
discussion,  and  so  simply  observe  that  over  against  the  higher 
wages  which  may  possibly  grow  out  of  protection,  if  this  much  be 
admitted,  there  remains  to  be  placed  the  higher  prices  imposed 
on  so  many  of  the  necessaries  of  life  by  our  revenue  system. 

In  addition  to  this  burden  we  have  a  heavy  load  laid  on 
our  working  people,  as  on  us  all,  from  the  indebtedness  of  our 
national,  State,  and  municipal  governments.  The  United 
States  census  for  1880  puts  the  debt  of  the  National  Govern- 
ment at  $2,120,415,370.63,  and  the  indebtedness  of  States,  ter- 
ritories, counties,  cities,  etc.,  at  $1,201,803,177. 

One  of  the  urgent  needs  of  our  workingmen's  movement  is 
that  it  shall  turn  its  forces  in  the  direction  of  purified  govern- 
ment, and  especially  of  purified  municipal  administration.  All 
burdens  fall  ultimately  upon  labor,  and  although  the  taxes 
may  seem  to  be  paid  by  wealthy  capitalists  they  all  come  out 
of  the  pockets  of  the  laborer,  in  increased  rents  and  increased 
prices.  The  corruption  and  maladministration  of  our  munici- 
pal governments,  which  have  imposed  a  gigantic  burden  of 
taxation  upon  our  citizens — allowance  being  of  course  made 
for  the  proper  works  of  public  utility — mean  simply  so  much 
per  annum  taken  out  of  the  pockets  of  the  workingmen.  The 
debt  of  New  York  in  1877  was  $132,096,992  ;  imposing  a  taxa- 
tion of  $31,105,533.  And  yet  to-day  the  cry  of  municipal  re- 


46  LABOR  AND  MUNICIPAL  REFORM. 

form  is  one  of  the  last  which  seems  to  show  any  power  of 
appealing  to  the  workingman.  He  will  throw  up  his  cap  for  all 
manner  of  political  schemes,  but  when  a  citizen's  movement  is 
originated  in  a  great  city  like  this  to  place  the  administration 
of  municipal  affairs  upon  a  strict  business  platform,  it  seems 
only  to  appeal  to  the  nominally  tax-paying  community  ;  and 
the  portion  of  the  community  which  thinks  itself  to  be  non- 
tax-paying passes  it  by  in  entire  indifference,  and  so  saddles 
these  burdens  anew  upon  its  own  shoulders.  Mr.  Frederick 
Harrison,  in  his  address  to  the  Trades  Union  Congress  already 
noticed,  calls  upon  the  workingmen  of  England  to  throw  every 
influence,  through  their  organizations,  at  once  into  the  problem 
of  uplifting  and  purifying  municipal  administration.  The  ap- 
peal is  still  more  urgent  in  our  country,  where  municipal  gov- 
ernment is  less  developed  than  in  most  other  portions  of 
Christendom.  Berlin,  a  city  of  about  the  same  size  as  New 
York,  and,  like  it,  having  grown  very  rapidly,  with  immense 
public  works  thus  necessitated,  had  a  budget  for  1882  of  nearly 
$6,000,000,  of  which  "every  penny  has  been  well  spent  and 
accounted  for."*  New  York's  budget  for  1880  was  $29,642,- 
991.98  ;  nearly  five  times  as  much  as  that  of  Berlin. 

But,  in  addition  to  the  burdens  of  extravagant,  wasteful,  and 
dishonest  government,  we  have  another  heavy  burden  laid 
upon  the  working  people,  as  upon  all  others  in  the  community, 
from  the  irresponsible  power  left  in  the  hands  of  our  great  cor- 
porations. Take  the  case  of  a  few  prime  necessities.  The 
Anti-monopoly  League  issues  the  following  statement,  which  I 
have  not  seen  refuted  : 

The  following  is  an  itemized  statement  of  the  approximate  cost  of  mining 
and  delivering  anthracite  coal  in  New  York  at  the  present  time,  with  profits 
I 
*  Nation,  No.  958. 


CORPORA  TION  TAXA  TION. — COAL.  4f 

included.     By  varying  the  items  and  distance  the  rightful  cost  can  be  calcu- 
lated at  any  point  : 

Royalty  to  land-owner  I2^c.  to  25c.,  say          .         .         .         .         .  $o  25 
Paid  to  miner  per   2,850  Ibs.,  6$c,  yielding   when  prepared   and 

placed  on  cars,  say  2,500  Ibs.,  or  per  ton  of  2,240  Ibs.,  say       .         58^ 
Expense  of  preparation  and  placing  on  cars,  maintenance  of  mine, 

profit  of  operator,  etc.,  say       .         .         .         .         .         .         .         55 

Transportation  to  tide  water,  say  120  miles  at  fc.  per  ton  per  mile, 

say  .  90 

Lighterage  from  railroad  terminus  to  New  York,  say      .         .         .         22^ 
Discharging  from  lighter,  say  ........          14 


2   65 

Less  difference  between  gross  ton  (2,240  Ibs.)  and  net  ton  (2,000 

Ibs.),  say  ten  per  cent. 26 


2  39 
Cartage  ............  30 

Profit  of  retail  dealer,  say •         •  75     / 

Waste,  say       ...........  5 

3  49 
If  delivered  from  yard,  or  in  small  quantities,  it  would  cost  a  little  more, 

but  most  of  it  is  delivered  direct  from  boat,  and  at  above  figures  full  weight 
of  coal  can  be  afforded  in  New  York  on  the  sidewalk  of  the  consumer,  and 
pay  every  person  connected  with  the  business  a  fair  profit.  The  difference 
between  this  price  and  what  consumers  of  coal  are  now  paying  represents 
the  tax  paid  to  monopoly. 

For  considerable  periods  during  1878  and  1879  coal  sold  at  an  average  of 
$2.25  per  ton  of  2,240  pounds  at  the  railroad  termini,  or  say  $3.25  per  ton 
of  2,000  pounds  delivered  to  the  consumer.  The  coal  roads  formed  a  pool  and 
prices  were  nearly  doubled.  The  Legislature  ordered  an  investigation.  The 
evidence  showed  that  $3.25  to  $3.50  was  a  fair  price  for  coal,  and  that  the 
coal  roads  had  watered  their  stocks  so  that  it  was  not  reasonable  to  expect 
that  ordinary  dividends  could,  with  justice  to  the  public,  be  paid  upon  the 
enormous  mass  of  obligations  outstanding.  The  words  of  the  committee 
referring  to  this  were  as  follows  : 

"  During  the  receipt  of  these  enormous  profits  many  of  the  coal  corpora- 
tions, as  was  the  case  with  railroads  not  engaged  in  the  coal-carrying  trade, 


48  TAXATION  ON  MILK. — OIL. 

unable,  under  their  charters,  or  for  other  reasons,  to  declare  dividends  upon 
their  stocks  that  would  absorb  their  unexpended  surplus,  issued  additional 
stock  to  the  stockholders,  for  which  they  paid  nothing,  inaugurated  what  is 
commonly  known  as  stock-watering,  or  a  capitalization  of  surplus  earnings, 
which  is  in  substance  exacting  money  from  the  people,  creating  an  in- 
debtedness representing  the  same,  and  making  this  the  basis  for  forever 
asking  the  public  to  pay  interest  upon  their  own  money  so  exacted. " 

Yet  owing  to  railroad  influence  in  the  Legislature  nothing  was  done  to  put 
a  limit  to  such  extortion. 

We  have  just  seen  the  Harlem  Railroad  reduce  its  rates  on 
milk  heavily,  as  a  result  of  official  investigation.  Those  rates 
had  been,  I  believe,  about  triple  the  rates  of  roads  running 
into  Boston.  And  milk  is  the  food  of  young  children — their 
vital  necessity  ;  on  which  this  heavy  taxation  was  laid  by  a 
wealthy  corporation. 

The  chief  light  of  the  poor  is  oil.  Gas  is  too  expensive  for 
them,  even  where  it  is  at  its  cheapest.  Oil  is  now  supplied  by 
a  corporation  which  has  established  an  almost  complete  monop- 
oly ;  an  organization,  doubtless,  with  many  good  qualities,  but 
an  organization  which  is  none  the  less  irresponsible  to  the  peo- 
ple, and  which  taxes  every  can  of  oil  that  the  poor  man  buys 
in  a  manner  wholly  unregulated  by  any  law.  Competition,  the 
only  self-regulating  action  which  our  society  theoretically  ad- 
mits, is  crushed  out,  and  the  Standard  Oil  Company  can  affix 
its  own  price,  and  that  price  must  be  paid. 

Mr.  Lloyd  (Atlantic  Monthly,  March,  1881)  thus  estimates 
this  tax  : 

To-day,  in  every  part  of  the  United  States,  people  who  burn  kerosene  are 
paying  the  Standard  Oil  Company  a  tax  on  every  gallon  amounting  to  sev- 
eral times  its  original  cost  to  that  concern.  ...  In  Pennsylvania,  the 
tax  levied  by  the  Standard  a*bove  all  expenses  and  legitimate  profits  is  cal- 
culated by  an  expert  at  fourteen  cents  a  gallon.  This  makes  a  yearly  tax 
on  the  light  in  most  general  use  in  that  State  of  $2,555,000.  The  whole 
country  consumed  last  year,  at  a  low  estimate,  22,000,000  gallons  of  kero- 


MONOPOLY  DEFINED,  49 

sene.  Putting  the  Standard  tax,  to  avoid  all  possibility  of  exaggeration, 
down  to  five  cents  a  gallon,  we  have  a  levy  on  the  whole  country  of  $11,- 
000,000,  besides  the  millions  taken  from  the  railroads  in  rebates. 

One  need  be  no  foe  to  corporations  to  speak  thus  of  the  de- 
fects of  a  governmental  system  which  provides  no  superintend- 
ence of  such  mammoth  companies. 

The  term  "  monopoly  "  is  often  used  loosely  against  corpora- 
tions. In  the  case  of  the  Standard  Oil  Company  its  use  is, 
strictly  speaking,  somewhat  inaccurate.  An  accumulation  or 
concentration  of  business  which  grows  of  itself  naturally,  by 
the  superior  force  of  the  brains  of  one  man,  or  by  the  natural 
tendency  of  things  in  trade,  can  scarcely  be  called  a  monopoly  ; 
but  the  moment  that  legislation  intervenes  to  give  special 
rights  to  any  corporation,  that  moment  true  monopoly  enters, 
and  where  a  monopoly  enters,  the  play  of  competition  ceases. 
Where,  then,  monopoly  does  enter,  there  is  bounden  upon  gov- 
ernment as  special  an  interference  on  behalf  of  society  at  large 
as  it  has  given  to  the  corporations  in  their  own  interests. 

And  even  where,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Standard  Oil  Com- 
pany, there  has  been  no  legislative  privilege,  yet  if  a  corporation 
has  grown  to  so  colossal  a  size  as  to  absorb  all  rivals,  we  have  the 
substance,  if  not  the  form,  of  a  monopoly,  and  the  State  is  bound, 
as  the  representative  of  the  commonwealth,  to  see  that  the 
wealth  of  the  commons  is  not  impoverished  to  build  up  the 
private  property  of  a  company. 

The  transient  monopolies  produced  by  gambling  combina- 
tions in  the  necessaries  of  life  are  coming  to  be  a  powerful  fac- 
tor in  the  disordering  of  prices,  opening  opportunities  of  im- 
mense profits  by  "corners,"  which  drive  the  prices  of  wheat 
and  other  staples  up  into  exorbitant  figures — and  as  such  they 
demand  some  wise  and  careful  exercise  of  governmental  super- 
vision. The  remedy  for  the  existing  speculations  in  food 


50  MINERAL  MONOPOLIES. 

stuffs  is  difficult  to  define,  since  this  evil  has  existed  and  been 
legislated  against  from  the  time  of  Edward  III.  and  his  statutes 
against  "  engrossing,"  and  since  our  business  has  become  so 
largely  a  dealing  in  "  futures  "  ;  but  that  some  remedy  needs  to 
be  found  is  plain  to  all  thoughtful  people,  and  that  such  remedy 
shall  be  found  is  the  specially  appointed  task  of  legislators. 

The  private  or  corporate  possession  of  mineral  resources, 
which  the  Creator  has  stored  up  in  the  earth  for  the  needs  of 
life,  with  the  consequent  power  of  taxing  the  necessaries  of  ex- 
istence, is  a  right  of  so  dubious  a  character  that  any  monopoly 
in  such  resources  seems  to  me  to  call  peculiarly  for  the  inter- 
vention of  government,  at  least  in  so  far  as  to  secure  some  thing 
like  an  equitable  adjustment  of  prices. 

And  yet  the  irresponsible  greed  of  great  corporations,  to- 
gether with  the  absence  of  proper  governmental  superintend- 
ence and  of  restrictive  legislation  in  the  interests  of  society, 
has  allowed  the  access  to  these  supplies  of  the  most  vital 
necessaries  of  life  to  be  monopolized.  The  mass  of  the  com- 
mon people  have  thus  been  shut  off  from  their  due  rights  in  the 
bountiful  provisions  of  the  Almighty.  The  corporations  which 
have  assumed  the  charge  of  the  transfer  of  mineral  resoures  to 
our  cities  have  entered  into  the  speculative  development  of 
those  mineral  resources  ;  the  two  agencies  have  become  one  ; 
and  the  practical  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter  is  that  which 
was  bluntly  avowed  by  a  leading  stockholder  of  one  of  those 
great  corporations  a  few  years  ago.  When  asked  what  the 
price  of  coal  would  probably  be  during  the  winter,  he  replied  : 
"  As  high  as  Providence  allows  and  as  low  as  necessity  com- 
pels." In  other  words,*  then,  we  have  placed  in  the  hands 
of  almost  wholly  irresponsible  companies  the  royal  right  to  tax 
our  citizens  as  they  will,  and  we  sit  supinely  under  the  yoke 
that  we  have  imposed  upon  our  own  necks. 


PATENT  RIGHTS.  51 

I  recognize  the  tendency  to  consolidation  as  an  inevitable 
one  in  the  world  of  business,  and,  under  proper  safeguards,  as 
a  useful  one.  But  all  power  needs  to  be  limited  and  watched, 
and  the  greater  the  power,  the  more  carefully  denned  should 
be  the  limits  of  its  exercise,  and  the  more  thorough  the  inspec- 
tion which  is  kept  over  it  by  the  State.  Government  owes  it 
to  all  its  citizens,  especially  to  the  largest  and  poorest  classes, 
to  see  that  the  private  fortunes  for  which  it  provides  the  oppor- 
tunity, by  its  facilitating  legislation,  do  not  impoverish  the 
commonwealth. 

The  whole  question  of  our  administration  of  privileges 
needs,  perhaps,  to  be  more  carefully  considered  than  it  has 
been  hitherto.  The  inordinate  extension  of  patent  rights  cre- 
ates monopolies  of  what,  with  an  advancing  civilization,  come 
to  be  the  necessities  of  the  people.  While  the  just  rights  of  the 
inventor  should  be  regarded — which,  however,  is  a  different 
matter  from  the  unjust  rights  of  the  patent  agent,  who  usually 
intervenes,  or  of  the  combination  of  capitalists,  who  buy  out 
the  rights  of  the  discoverer — while,  I  say,  the  just  rights  of  the 
inventor  should  be  regarded,  at  the  same  time  consideration 
should  be  given  to  the  just  needs  of  the  people.  As  it  is,  every 
modern  tool  of  labor  is  "  protected  "  by  a  patent,  which  saddles 
upon  the  neediest  workman  and  workwoman  an  oppressive  tax 
for  its  use — the  use  which  alone  can  keep  them  from  starvation. 
Franklin  declined  to  patent  his  inventions,  but  then  Franklin 
was  an  old  fogy.  Perhaps  the  notion  is  not  so  wild,  as  at  first 
sight  would  seem,  that  the  State  should  buy  patents  from  dis- 
coverers, at  liberal  prices,  and  then  give  the  results  of  these  in- 
ventions to  the  mass  of  the  people. 

When  these  facts  as  to  the  burdens  which  society  lays  upon 
the  wageworker  are  duly  weighed,  a  just  judgment  will,  to  say 
the  least,  greatly  mitigate  the  sentence  otherwise  to  be  pro- 


52  EXCUSES  FOR    THRIFTLESSNESS. 

nounced  upon  the  thriftlessness  of  workingmen.  That  thrift  - 
lessness  will  thus  be  seen  to  be  gendered  in  the  anarchic  busi- 
ness system  of  our  age,  and  in  the  low  level  to  which  it  and 
our  vast  system  of  taxation  reduces  the  wage-workers,  and  the 
demand  for  thrift  on  their  part  will  appear  to  be  almost  a 
mockery,  when  made  by  the  classes  who  profit  by  our  industrial 
and  political  systems. 

These  and  other  similar  considerations,  for  I  have  only 
touched  upon  the  more  salient  features  of  the  situation,  should, 
as  it  seems  to  me,  effectually  disabuse  candid  minds  of  the 
illusion  that  the  fault  of  the  present  condition  of  labor  can  be 
saddled  entirely  upon  labor  itself.  Capital  has  its  just  share, 
and  it  is  a  large  share,  in  bringing  about  the  low  estate  of 
labor.  Society  at  large  needs  to  make  the  confession,  "  we 
have  left  undone  those  things  which  we  ought  to  have  done." 

And  in  all  that  has  been  said  there  is  nothing,  as  it  seems 
to  me,  to  which  any  just  and  open  mind  can  take  exception. 
These  neglacted  duties  of  labor,  of  capital,  of  government  and 
of  society  at  large,  form,  therefore,  the  tasks  to  be  taken  up  at 
once,  if  any  improvement  is  to  be  made  in  the  present  state  of 
labor,  or  if  the  undoubted  tendencies  towards  a  worse  condi- 
tion are  to  be  arrested.  Whatever  other  things  may  remain  to 
be  done,  when  all  these  reforms  have  been  carried  out,  will  be 
much  more  readily  perceived,  and  much  more  easily  effected, 
after  the  education  of  both  labor  and  capital  has  been  led  up 
to  the  level  indicated  in  these  proposed  changes.  Indeed,  I 
can  see  no  way  to  any  peaceable  securing  of  more  radical  read- 
justments of  the  relations  of  capital  and  labor,  such  as  must 
eventually  take  place,  except  through  the  gradual  improvement 
of  labor  itself,  and  of  capital's  attitude  toward  labor. 

Most  of  the  reforms  which  have  been  indicated  involve  a 
moral  element.  The  whole  problem  is  indeed  quite  as  mucn 


REFORM    VS.    RECONSTRUCTION.  53 

a  moral  problem  as  an  economic  problem.  Now,  all  reforms 
of  character  and  conduct  have  this  peculiarity,  that  one  sees 
further  and  more  clearly  into  what  there  is  to  be  reformed 
as  one  earnestly  tackles  the  job  of  righting  the  wrongs  that  are 
seen.  However  imperfect  may  be  the  perception  of  what  is 
needful  to  be  done,  when  one  really  sets  at  work  to  do  what 
is  seen,  his  eyes  open  wider  ;  and  thus  he  grows  gradually  into 
a  vision  of  the  immensity  of  the  task  upon  which  he  has 
entered,  a  vision  that  in  the  outset  his  conscience  was  not  edu- 
cated to  recognize,  or  his  will  to  undertake. 

I  understand  this  committee  to  have,  as  its  primary  aim,  the 
drawing  forth  of  suggestions  that  might  lead  to  practical  meas- 
ures of  immediate  relief,  and  only  secondarily  the  ventilation 
of  ideas  that  look  beyond  the  present  to  the  future,  to  a  radical 
reconstruction  of  society  on  the  ground-plans  of  justice.  My 
suggestions  have  looked,  therefore,  to  practicable  improve- 
ments. But  before  I  close,  I  would  like  to  say  frankly  that,  in 
all  which  I  have  suggested,  I  clearly  recognize  that  only  the 
surface  of  the  problem  has  been  uncovered.  There  are  far 
deeper  and  more  serious  aspects  of  the  question,  which  will 
have  to  be  opened  when  the  time  comes  ripe.  If  all  that  I 
have  suggested  were  carried  out,  the  evils  of  the  present  con- 
dition of  labor  would  be  ameliorated,  but  not  cured.  The  old 
troubles  would  recur  again,  after  an  interval  of  comfort.  Not 
until  the  seat  of  the  social  disease,  whose  ugly  developments 
have  called  out  this  consultation,  is  reached,  and  an  alterative 
is  found,  will  any  permanent  cure  be  effected. 

It  seems  to  me  that  all  thoughtful  people  ought  to  be  at 
least  opening  their  eyes  to  recognize  the  possibility  of  there 
being  graver  complications  in  our  case  than  is  ordinarily  sus- 
pected. And  I  would  like,  therefore,  to  offer  a  few  hints  as 
to  the  nature  of  those  complications,  in  so  far  as  I  can  read 


54  LEGISLATION  AND  LABOR. 

them,  and  as  to  what  may  now  be  begun  in  the  way  of  consti- 
tutional treatment,  and  thus  contribute  my  little  bit  towards 
the  second  aim  of  the  committee,  as  I  understand  it. 

III. 

*- 

SOCIAL     FORCES     FAVORING     CAPITAL     AND     LAND    AS    AGAINST 

LABOR. 

As  I  read  the  problem  of  society  to-day,  there  are  large 
forces  making  for  the  interests  of  capital  and  land,  as  against 
the  interests  of  labor — these  three  factors  together  creating  all 
wealth. 

(i)  Legislation  works  against  labor. — Legislation  has  thus  far 
been  in  the  hands  of  the  well-to-do  classes,  /.  e.,  of  capital  and 
of  land,  and  it  has  been  shaped  in  this  free  country,  as  in 
Europe,  in  the  interests  of  these  two  classes.  Our  Legislatures 
are  overburdened  with  all  sorts  of  special  bills  devised  to  bene- 
fit private  parties,  but  the  measures  of  purely  public  utility  are 
few  and  far  between.  There  is  very  little  legislation  recorded 
on  our  statute-books  that  looks  to  the  care  of  the  rights  of 
labor,  while  there  is  a  vast  body  of  laws  in  existence  guarding 
every  possible  interest  of  capital.  We  have  in  no  one  of  our 
States  any  legislation  at  all  comparable  with  the  elaborate  fac- 
tory acts  of  England.  Only  fifteen  of  our  States  have  labor 
bureaus,  and  these  are  all,  with  one  exception,  the  growth  of 
the  last  half  dozen  years.  This  great  State  has  only  just  cre- 
ated such  a  bureau.  This  metropolitan  city  has  only  within 
three  years,  as  the  result  of  a  long  agitation,  obtained  adequate 
sanitary  laws  for  the  tenement-houses  which  shelter  500,000 
human  beings,  and  a  proper  staff  of  officers  to  enforce  them. 
Rich  men  have  all  sorts  of  carefully  drawn-up  acts  guarding 
the  loaning  and  borrowing  of  money,  but  the  poor  man,  when 


PARTIAL  LEGISLATION.  55 

he  wants  to  borrow,  has  to  go  to  the  pawn-shops,  over  which, 
as  he  finds,  to  his  cost,  there  is  next  to  no  restraint  of  law  ;  so 
that  after  he  has  once  deposited  a  valuable  article  in  time  of 
need,  and  agreed  to  pay  a  ruinous  rate  of  interest,  he  has  no 
security  that  he  will  ever  get  back  his  property,  even  though 
able  and  anxious  to  redeem  it. 

It  is  the  same  story  everywhere.  The  men  at  the  top  of  the 
heap  cry  out,  whenever  an  attempt  is  made  to  secure  legislation 
for  labor  :  "  Hands  off  ;  the  sacred  principle  of  self-help  must 
not  be  interfered  with  ;  the  less  legislation  the  better";  and  so 
on  to  the  end  of  the  gamut  of  stock  phrases  which  the  press 
and  the  professors  roll  off  with  unctuous  glibness. 

Meanwhile,  these  very  many-millionaires,  and  these  very 
gigantic  corporations,  whose  counsel  are  so  eloquent  upon  the 
danger  of  over-legislation,  have  climbed  to  their  high  pros- 
perity by  the  helping  hand  of  law,  through  legislation  specially 
enacted  to  further  their  schemes.  They  never  could  have  been 
what  they  are  but  for  special  legislation.  The  hypocrisy  of 
the  cant  of  non-legislation  is  sickening  to  honest  minds,  and 
must  be  irritating  beyond  description  to  those  who  are  silenced 
by  it.  Labor  is  opening  its  eyes  to  see  at  last  that  a  demo- 
cratic country  which  rarely  legislates  for  the  demos,  the  people, 
is  some  thing  of  a  fraud.  Labor  is  preparing  to  enter  the  po- 
litical field,  and  is  making  tentative  essays  in  this  direction. 
In  England,  the  pressure  of  the  trades  unions  has  already 
wrested  solid  victories  from  Parliament,  and,  under  the  grow- 
ing mental  enlightenment  and  the  deepening  moral  sentiment, 
an  immense  stride  is  being  taken  towards  a  new  era  of  states- 
manship ;  an  era  in  which  the  State  will  look,  first  of  all,  for  its 
own  safety  and  prosperity,  to  the  rightful  ordering  of  the  con- 
ditions of  life  among  the  vast  mass  of  labor,  on  which  the  whole 
social  structure  rests.  We  shall  never  gain  a  satisfactory  ad- 


56  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT  AND  LABOR. 

justment  of  the  problem  until  our  governments,  municipal, 
State  and  national,  concern  themselves  at  least  as  much  with 
the  interests  of  labor  as  with  those  of  capital.  And  this  will 
never  be  until  labor  takes  the  field  of  politics  in  dead  earnest, 
and  compels  attention  to  its  long-neglected  claims. 

(2)  Industrial  development  works  against  labor. — There  are 
more  puzzling  factors  than  privileging  legislation  at  work 
to  handicap  labor.  Our  century  has  witnessed  a  revolu- 
tionary change  in  the  character  of  the  industrial  system — 
a  change  which  has  been  steadily  making  for  capital  against 
labor,  except  in  so  far  as  its  own  excesses  have  wrought 
local  and  partial  protest  and  reaction.  The  introduction  of 
the  system  of  aggregated  labor  in  the  factory,  and  the  develop- 
ment of  the  principle  of  the  division  of  labor,  thus  made 
practicable,  have  gradually  reduced  the  once  free  artisan  to  a 
new  serfdom,  in  which  he  is  completely  at  the  mercy  of  capital, 
save  as  by  union  he  makes  resistance.  He  no  longer  is  master 
of  a  craft.  He  is  a  bit  of  a  process.  He  does  a  fraction  of  a 
complete  job.  Of  the  rest  of  the  process  he  knows  nothing. 
Consequently  he  cannot  stand  by  himself.  If  he  lose  his 
place  he  cannot  set  up,  in  a  small  way,  for  himself,  even  if  the 
general  conditions  of  the  business  would  give  him  a  ghost  of 
a  chance.  In  losing  the  home  work  of  the  artisan  of  the  olden 
time,  he  loses  with  it  the  foothold  on  the  soil,  though  that  soil 
were  but  a  bit  of  a  garden,  which  gave  him  the  sense  of  free- 
dom. He  literally  has  no  base  for  personal  independence. 
He  no  longer  offers  his  wares,  the  products  of  his  handicraft, 
for  sale  in  the  market.  He  has  neither  the  workshop,  the 
tools,  nor  the  knowledge  o,f  any  complete  process  by  which  to 
make  any  thing  himself. 

Only  large  wealth  commands  the  means  of  production,  and 
only  combined  labor  supplies  the  power  of  production.  The 


FACTORY   VS.   FREEDOM.  57 

workman  awaits  the  offer,  on  the  part  of  the  capitalist,  of  a 
workshop,  of  tools,  and  of  the  fellows  who  can  complete  his 
fractional  skill.  He  has  become  part  of  a  gigantic  mechanism 
that  is  run  by  capital.  He  is  utterly,  absolutely  helpless  in 
himself.  He  therefore  has  to  enter  the  "  labor  market  "  and 
offer  for  sale — no  longer  his  works,  but  his  working.  He  sells 
himself.  Under  what  is,  with  grim  sarcasm,  called  "  the  sys- 
tem of  free  contract,"  he  engages  on  his  part  to  make  over  to 
an  employer  his  labor,  in  return  for  that  employer's  finding 
him  the  means  and  conditions  without  which  he  is  no  longer 
able  to  work. 

A  new  feudal  system  is  set  up,  in  which,  through  all  the  de- 
scending gradations,  labor  holds  its  little  all  by  the  grace  of 
the  feudal  lord.  It  draws  the  feoff  of  life  from  its  master  and 
suzerain.  Of  course  it  is  true  that  under  the  old  home-work- 
shop system  there  were  journeymen  who  were  in  a  certain  sense 
dependent  on  the  master ;  for  whom  the  master  found  the 
workshop,  to  whom  he  paid  wages,  and  whose  products  he 
sold  ;  but  each  man  might  in  time  become  a  master  of  his 
craft  and  of  his  tools,  and  thus  of  himself.  Each  man  looked 
forward  to  thus  becoming  a  master  workman  and  hiring  other 
workmen  ;  an  expectation  which,  while  we  hear  much  about  its 
being  still  a  possibility,  is  growing  increasingly  difficult  of 
realization  with  each  fresh  turn  of  the  wheel  in  the  evolution 
of  the  factory  system,  and  which,  to  all  intents,  is  practically 
unrealizable  already  in  most  branches  of  industry. 

It  is  not  speaking  too  strongly  to  say  that  such  a  radical 
revolution  as  has  thus  been  wrought  in  the  condition  of  labor 
is  without  a  parallel  in  the  previous  history  of  Christendom, 
and  that  it  is  fraught  with  dangers  of  the  most  ominous  kind 
to  society  at  large.  Unarrested— or  perhaps,  let  me  rather  say, 
led  on  to  no  further  and  higher  evolution,  in  which  its  present 


58  MACHINERY   VS.   MANHOOD. 

action  shall  be  corrected, — this  system  would  crush  out  the  free 
manhood  of  the  workingman. 

This  factory  system  has  been  still  further  aggravated  by  the 
introduction  of  mechanism  and  of  steam.  Increasingly,  the  labor 
formerly  wrought  by  man  is  being  done  by  machinery  driven 
by  steam.  One  after  another,  the  processes  of  every  old-time 
handicraft  are  being  transferred  to  vast  and  complicated  ma- 
chines, and  production  is  no  longer  to  be  called  a  manufacture, 
but  a  machino-facture.  The  skill  which  of  old  lay  in  the 
deft  fingers  of  the  craftsman  is  becoming  lodged  in  steely 
mechanisms.  Men  become  the  tenders  upon  the  costly  and 
cunning  machine.  As  such  mere  tenders,  whose  work  is  to 
feed  and  wait  on  the  intelligent  labors  of  these  giant  looms  and 
presses,  skilled  workmen  are  often  no  longer  requisite.  Poorer 
work  men  take  their  place  ;  women  take  the  place  of  these 
inferior  men  ;  children  at  last  come  into  demand  in  lieu  of 
women.  Poor  workmen  demand  less  pay  than  skilled  crafts- 
men, women  less  than  men,  and  children  less  than  women. 
Thus  wages  fall,  and  a  man's  foes  are  they  of  his  own  house- 
hold, very  literally.  The  contrast  between  the  New  England 
operatives  of  a  generation  ago  and  those  of  to-day  is  very 
significant  of  the  change  which  the  factory  is  steadily  working. 

Nor  is  this  all  of  the  evil  effect  of  the  system.  The  intro- 
duction of  mechanism  displaces  all  human  labor  to  an  ever- 
increasing  extent.  One  machine  does  the  work  of  a  host  of 
hands.  So  these  hands  are  thrown  out  of  employment,  and 
thus,  as  mechanism  enters  one  field  of  production  after  another, 
men  retire.  Of  course  this  action  is  mitigated,  to  some  extent, 
by  the  opening  up  of  other  lines  of  occupation.  The  enor- 
mous development  of  industry  in  our  age,  and  especially  in  our 
country,  prevents  us  from  feeling  the  full  force  of  this  ten- 
dency. But  it  is  working  among  us  at  an  alarming  rate  of  speed. 


INFLUENCE   OF  MECHANISM.  59 

Thus,  in  these  various  ways,  labor  suffers  severely  from 
our  mechanical  improvements,  and  from  the  monster  forces 
which  science  has  broken  in  to  drive  our  engines.  Its  work 
is  first  robbed  of  interest  and  educating  power,  as  already 
pointed  out  in  the  early  part  of  this  talk,  and  then  taken  from  it. 
The  labor  market  is  crowded  with  the  disposessed  "  hands,"  who 
bid  against  each  other  and  bid  their  common  wages  down. 

The  one  beneficent  effect  of  mechanism  upon  labor  has  been 
the  cheapening  of  goods.  Great  as  this  benefit  may  be,  its 
value  seems  to  me  much  overrated  when  we  consider  the  in- 
ferior quality  of  cheap  goods,  while  it  is  as  largely  negatived 
when  we  note  the  lowered  wages  by  which  it  is  generally 
accompanied. 

Thus  far  it  is  questionable  whether  labor  has  derived  any 
substantial  benefit  from  the  marvellous  development  of  mechan- 
ism, at  all  comparable  with  the  injury  which  it  has  experienced 
from  this  revolution.  It  was  fondly  hoped,  in  the  dawning  of 
our  era  of  mechanism,  that  all  servile  and  exhausting  toil  was 
to  be  lifted  from  man  ;  that  all  necessities  were  to  be  so  mul- 
tiplied that  the  poor  would  cease  to  want,  and  that  leisure  and 
its  opportunities  of  culture  would  come  to  be  a  common  bless- 
ing, through  the  immense  increase  of  production — that  is  to 
say,  of  wealth.  What  a  mockery  these  dreams  seem  now  ! 

Yet  these  dreams  were  clearly  no  wild  fancies.  They  were 
true  visions  of  what  might  be,  under  any  just  system  of  con- 
trolling these  genii  whom  science  has  summoned  to  the  service 
of  man  ;  visions  which  may  come  true  if  ever  man  becomes 
their  master  instead  of  men — the  commonwealth,  and  not 
private  rich  men.  In  any  equitable  distribution  of  the  im- 
mensely increased  wealth  which  mechanism  has  created  labor 
would  have  been  much  better  off.  But  it  is  precisely  against 
such  equitable  distribution  that  mechanism  has  worked. 


60  MECHANISM  FAVORS  CAPITAL. 

The  party  owning  the  plant  and  controlling  the  means  of 
production  has  found  its  power  multiplied  portentously.  It 
has  been  those  means  of  production  which  have  received  the 
increase  of  productive  power,  and  he  who  owns  them  gains  the 
benefit  of  their  increased  productivity.  Capital  reaps  the 
golden  harvest.  Capital's  yoke  takes  a  new  clasp  around  the 
neck  of  labor — more  its  slave  by  each  new  improvement  that 
dispenses  with  human  skill.  It  is  thus  that  capital — the  party 
possessing  the  means  of  production — is  becoming  ever  richer 
and  more  powerful,  while  labor  is  becoming  ever  poorer  and 
weaker,  save  as  it  combines,  and,  not  being  as  yet  wholly 
superfluous,  stays  the  downward  tendency  ;  and  save  as  other 
factors  enter  the  problem,  changing  the  equation. 

Labor's  eyes  are  at  last  becoming  opened  to  the  fact  that  the 
present  system  plays  almost  wholly  into  the  hands  of  capital. 
It  is  coming  to  see  that  the  control  of  the  increased  produc- 
tivity developed  by  mechanism  must  always  remain  with  those 
who  control  the  mechanism  ;  that  the  bulk  of  the  wealth  thus 
created  must  go  to  capital.  This  is  the  meaning  of  the  de- 
mand, now  beginning  to  make  itself  heard  from  the  ranks  of 
labor,  that  the  means  of  production  shall  not  be  left  wholly  in 
the  hands  of  capital  ;  that  either  directly,  in  great  co-operative 
organizations,  or  indirectly,  in  the  person  of  the  state,  labor 
shall  have  a  share  in  the  control  of  these  monster  forces. 
Sweeping  measures  truly,  which,  as  a  radical  cure  of  the  pres- 
ent disease  of  the  industrial  system,  are  coming  to  take  pos- 
session of  many  minds,  naturally  impatient  of  mere  mollifying 
ointments  for  organic  disorders — ideas  which,  if  they  once 
master  the  workingmen  of  a  land  where  there  is  universal 
suffrage,  may  work  a  rapfd  revolution,  that,  alike  for  labor  and 
capital,  is  to  be  dreaded. 

Unripe  revolutions  always  fail.     No  power  on   earth  can 


LABOR  MUST  CONTROL  IT.  6l 

make  a  new  industrial  system  work  ahead  of  its  time.  Men 
must  be  educated  for  all  higher  institutions.  The  greater  the 
advance  which  a  new  institution  would  effect,  the  more  the 
need  of  its  coming  in  slowly,  step  by  step,  as  we  work  up  to  pre- 
paredness for  it.  Those  who  believe  that  the  principle  of  such 
a  theory  is  right,  as  I  do,  should  be  all  the  more  careful  to 
point  out  that  it  is  an  ideal,  which  can  be  won  alone  by  patient 
education  in  co-operation  and  by  general  advance  of  intelli- 
gence and  power  on  the  part  of  workingmen. 

If  such  a  change  were  to  be  made  to-day,  by  any  power 
under  heaven,  it  would,  in  the  present  state  of  our  working- 
men,  simply  bring  industry  to  a  stand-still  and  introduce  worse 
evils  than  those  now  endured. 

If  the  co-operative  commonwealth  ever  comes,  as  I  trust  it 
may  come,  it  will  come  as  the  final  generalization  of  a  long 
series  of  integrations,  of  which  the  co-operative  societies,  now 
so  much  neglected,  form  the  immediate  step  in  advance. 

But,  none  the  less,  the  general  discussion  of  the  relative 
rights  of  capital  and  labor,  growing  out  of  these  new  powers 
of  production,  is  likely  to  go  on  with  a  deepening  sense  of 
unrest  under  the  existing  conditions.  Under  the  able  tutor- 
ship of  German  economists,  whose  sympathies  are  strongly 
with  the  workingman,  wage-workers  are  beginning  to  reopen 
the  whole  case  of  capital  versus  labor,  and  to  study  it  afresh 
from  the  standpoint  of  labor  ;  with  surprising  conclusions, 
flowing  from  a  changed  order  of  the  premises.  Charles  Kings- 
ley  said  many  years  ago  that  the  equation  of  the  social  prob- 
lem, stated  thus  :  "  Given  the  few  in  affluence,  how  to  find  the 
condition  of  the  many,"  would  differ  rather  widely  from  the 
equation  reached  when  the  problem  should  be  stated  thus  : 
"  Given  the  many  in  comfort,  how  to  find  the  condition  of  the 
few."  Labor  is  coming  to  state  the  problem  thus,  and  to  draw 


62  CAPITAL'S  PLEA. 

its  own  conclusions.  It  says  :  "  Labor  creates  wealth,  ac- 
cording to  good  authorities  ;  why  should  it  have  only  the 
fraction  that  is  left  after  the  quotient  has  been  entered  on  the 
side  of  capital  ?  " 

Of  course,  answers,  more  or  less  full,  are  ready  at  hand  for 
such  a  question.  It  is  open  to  capital  to  point  out  that  hands 
need  a  head  ;  that  brawn  needs  brain  to  direct  it,  to  feed  it 
with  the  ideas  which  give  value  to  one  form  of  labor  over 
another,  and  to  give  it  the  grasp  of  affairs  necessary  for  indus- 
trial generalship  to-day  ;  that  the  worker  needs  still  the  man  of 
resources,  to  provide  the  costly  plant  that  is  indispensable  to 
modern  industry  ;  that  the  chief  share  of  productive  power  is 
now  really  lodged  in  these  marvellous  machines,  which  the 
human  hands  only  tend  ;  and  that  to  draw  the  profits  of  the 
machines  they  must  first  earn  the  capital  which  buys  them  ; 
that  a  fair  return  is  due  as  interest  on  the  plant,  as  insurance 
against  risks,  and  as  wages  for  the  directing  services,  which 
are  becoming  more  onerous  as  business  grows  more  complicated. 

Wise  men  among  our  wage-workers  are  quite  ready  to  admit 
all  that  is  true  in  these  propositions,  and  to  yield  all  that  falls 
due  to  capital  on  these  grounds.  Only,  they  are  then  very 
likely  to  drop  into  the  despairing  feeling  that,  since  these  claims 
eat  up  all  the  profits,  the  very  order  of  nature  is  against  them, 
and  that  there  is  no  hope  ahead,  except  through  a  growth  so 
slow  that  not  only  will  it  never  benefit  them,  but  that  not  even 
their  children  or  their  children's  children  will  find  their  lot 
substantially  improved.  And  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that 
wisdom  is  not  any  more  lavishly  scattered  among  workingmen 
than  among  other  human  beings,  and  that  there  are  plenty  of 
foolish  and  unreasonable  people  in  the  class  which  by  its  num- 
bers is  everywhere  a  power,  and  which  by  its  franchise  may  be 
here  at  any  time  the  controlling  power. 


THE   GUIDANCE  NEEDFUL.  63 

There  are  portentous  significances  in  such  an  attitude,  in 
which  the  sense  of  injustice  en  the  part  of  man  deepens  into 
the  sense  of  injustice  on  the  part  of  nature  ;  dark  shadows  of 
revolution  and  anarchy  which  may  well  "  give  us  pause." 

Wise  men  among  our  capitalists  and  in  our  governments, 
it  seems  to  me,  ought  to  be  stirring  themselves  to  prevent  such 
contingencies. 

Capital  ought  to  be  seriously  endeavoring  to  ally  labor  with 
itself,  and  to  train  it  into  capacity  for  a  share  in  the  possession 
and  control  of  the  means  of  production.  The  ownership  of  the 
means  of  production  by  the  people  and  for  the  people  seems 
to  me  just  as  certainly  the  ultimate  form  of  the  social  order  as 
government  by  the  people  and  for  the  people  is  the  oncoming 
form  of  the  political  order.  And  in  society,  as  in  the  state, 
the  choice  for  men  is  not  that  of  accepting  or  rejecting  an 
evolution  of  nature,  but  simply  of  resisting  it  and  blocking  its 
pathway,  which  means  always  French  revolutions,  or  of  guiding 
it  slowly  and  peacefully  along  safe  channels. 

Perhaps  the  greatest  benefactors  of  mankind  to-day  are  those 
capitalists  who,  like  M.  Godin,  are  wisely  training  their  work- 
ingmen  for  the  higher  order.  No  nobler  discernment  is  shown 
to-day  than  where  capital  recognizes  that  the  gospel  of  demand 
and  supply  is  after  all  an  apocryphal  gospel,  not  holding  the 
secret  of  social  salvation ;  that  competition  must  needs  be 
"ranked"  by  co-operation,  as  the  next  step  toward  an  order 
in  which  the  mighty  resources  and  the  monster  forces  of 
nature  shall  be  the  genii  not  of  a  few  rich  men,  but  of  the 
commonwealth. 

Government's  part  in  helping  on  this  proprietorship  of  the 
people  is  not  very  plain.  Yet  that  the  state  is  supremely  con- 
cerned in  this  matter  of  preventing  the  impoverishment  of  its 
people,  and  of  seeing  the  mass  of  its  citizens  enter  upon  the 


64  THE   STATE'S  PART. 

possession  and  enjoyment  of  the  productive  power  of  our 
present  civilization  needs  no  argument.  The  national  gov- 
ernment might  certainly,  for  one  thing,  establish  a  national 
bureau  of  labor,  to  investigate  the  problem  in  a  way  that  no 
one  student  has  the  opportunity  of  doing,  and  to  spread  light 
upon  it.*  Such  a  bureau  might  easily  encourage  and  stimulate 
the  self-acting  efforts  of  both  capitalists  and  workingmen  tow- 
ard the  joint  proprietorship  of  the  means  of  production.  I 
am  not  sure  that,  since  the  state  grants  subventions  to  rail- 
roads and  steamers,  and  imposes  a  high  tariff  to  aid  manufac- 
turers, it  should  not  also  grant  subventions  to  properly  organ- 
ized societies  of  workingmen,  seeking  to  develop  co-operative 
production,  as  yet  scarcely  attempted  with  seriousness  here. 

The  problem  of  poverty  is  to  be  solved  not  only  by  a  larger 
production,  but  by  a  juster  distribution.  We  do,  indeed,  need 
a  vastly  greater  productivity  in  order  to  insure  the  comfort 
that  all  crave  ;  but  we  have  enough  now,  if  fairly  divided,  to 
do  away  with  the  worst  horrors  of  our  poverty.  And,  in  any 
possible  productivity,  the  real  question  is  of  getting  it  equally 
distributed. 

So  level-headed  an  authority  as  Mr.  Edward  Atkinson,  in  an 
address  made  at  the  opening  of  the  second  annual  exhibition 
of  the  New  England  Manufacturers'  and  Mechanics'  Institute, 
showed  that  the  average  annual  productivity  of  our  country,  if 
equally  divided  among  the  men,  women  and  children,  would 
give  an  income  of  50  cents  a  day  per  capita  to  all  our  people. 
That  would  be  the  equivalent,  for  an  average  family  of  seven, 
to  the  present  wages  of  a  skilled  mechanic. 

The  moral  is  one  that  I  will  leave  so  practical  a  thinker  as 
Mr.  Atkinson  to  draw.  lie  says  : 

*  Since  this  testimony  was  given  before  the  Senate  Committee  a  National 
Bureau  of  Labor  has  been  established,  and  has  already  presented  its  first  re- 
port, a  most  valuable  document. 


BETTER  DISTRIBUTION.  6$ 

By  so  much  as  some  of  you  enjoy  more  others  must  have  less.  What 
have  each  of  you  done,  what  are  you  doing  now,  to  entitle  you  to  more  than 
what  a  half  dollar  a  day  will  pay  for  in  food  and  fuel  and  shelter  and  cloth- 
tng  ?  Are  you  rendering  service  equivalent  to  your  greater  gain  ? 

A  question  this  which  plainly  is  primarily  a  moral  appeal. 
As  such  it  is  to  be  answered  by  a  more  enlightened  conscience. 

The  church's  business — as  also  the  business  of  all  public 
teachers,  the  press,  professors  of  political  economy,  etc. — is 
to  urge  this  appeal  and  to  illumine  the  consciences  to  which  it 
is  made  ;  that  so,  gradually,  clearer  answers  may  be  given. 
We  must  look  first  of  all  to  the  creation  of  a  public  sentiment 
which  will  hold  large  wealth  strictly  accountable  to  society  for 
its  extra  share,  and  which  will  frown  upon  the  accumulation 
of  very  large  fortunes,  as — what  they  really  are — fungoid 
growths,  denoting  an  unhealthy  circulation  of  blood  in  the 
body  politic. 

Can  legislation  do  any  thing  to  help  a  better  distribution  ?  In 
attempting  this  it  must  make  sure  not  to  check  production,  as 
many  remedies  proposed  would  certainly  do.  I  should  doubt 
the  possibility  of  avoiding  such  a  check  upon  production  in 
any  limitation  of  the  right  of  acquisition.  The  right  of  trans- 
ference is  less  open  to  this  danger,  as  sound  economists  have 
recognized. 

It  would  be  a  wholly  safe  venture  to  try  the  effect  upon  the 
problem  of  excessive  wealth  of  limiting  the  right  of  bequest. 
Such  a  measure  would  secure  the  recognition  of  the  vital 
principle  of  the  subordination  of  private  property  to  the  com- 
monwealth, and  if  it  worked  well  would  open  the  way  to  larger 
measures. 

(3)  Land  also  works  against  labor. — Land  is  the  first  resource 
of  man,  and  the  last.  It  is  nature's  provision  for  his  wants. 
Civilization  begins  by  man's  settling  down  to  cultivate  the  soil. 


66  LAND    VS.   LABOR. 

It  grows  by  man's  constant  development  of  the  resources  of  the 
land.  It  has  died  again  and  again  through  the  mass  of  men 
being  shut  off  from  access  to  its  bountiful  treasures,  under 
unwise  and  unjust  social  systems  which  have  made  land  the 
monoply  of  a  few  instead  of  the  heritage  of  the  many. 

There  is  no  doubt  about  agriculture  being  the  basic  industry, 
the  germinal  industry.  All  otricr  forms  of  industry  rest  upon  h, 
grow  out  of  it.  They  are  //,  transformed.  It  equals  all  the  rest 
of  the  social  productivity.  Every  manufacture  and  trade  rep- 
resents a  productiveness  which  is  only  possible  as  man  is  fed, 
and  thus  supplied  Avith  labor  power.  We  all  feel  instinctively 
the  absolute  dependence  of  civilization  upon  the  culture  of 
the  land,  in  our  anxiety  about  "the  crops,"  in  our  forecast  of 
a  year's  business  by  the  state  of  the  harvest. 

Every  industry,  in  a  sound  society,  should  be  developed  pro- 
portionately to  the  culture  of  the  land.  That  such  a  propor- 
tion is  necessary  needs  no  argument,  unless  there  is  no  law  of 
stability  in  the  relative  proportions  of  the  base  of  a  pyramid  to 
its  height  and  mass.  What  this  proportion  should  be  is  capa- 
ble of  being  stated  statistically,  from  a  study  of  different 
nations.  Now  this  means  simply  that  there  is  a  close  and  ex- 
act relation  between  the  whole  mass  of  any  society  and  its 
land-culture  ;  that  every  atom  composing  society  mu"st  have 
its  due  representation  in  the  tilling  of  land.  Food  must  be 
growing  to  supply  the  whole  people  and  to  drive  their  varied 
activities.  And  this,  again,  means  that  each  individual  of 
society  stands  in  a  real  and  necessary  relationship  to  some 
particular  bit  of  earth,  which  is  being  cultivated  for  him. 

Whatever  a  man  does — preach  or  write,  handle  tools  or  carry 
bricks,  or  keep  store — some  one  is  growing  his  food  for  him. 
In  a  simple  state  of  society  we  see  this  readily,  because  no  one 
is  far  removed  from  the  original  work  of  all.  Every  time  the 


MAN  STANDS  ON  LAND.  6? 

farmer  drives  into  the  village  and  pays  for  the  goods  that  he 
buys  at  the  store,  in  the  wheat,  or  oats,  or  vegetables,  or  fruit 
that  he  has  raised,  this  fundamental  fact  is  seen.  But  it  is  just 
as  truly  a  fact  in  a  great  city  where  there  is  no  barter,  and  where 
we  are  so  far  removed  from  this  simple  state  of  society  that 
we  forget,  often,  our  real  relations  to  the  soil.  They  are  hidden 
in  the  complex  web  of  society,  but  they  are  there  none  the  less. 

Now,  if  each  man  in  a  society  stands  on  his  own  rood  of 
ground,  it  is  his  own  fault  alone  if  he  cannot  live.  If,  not  be- 
ing on  it,  but  doing  some  other  necessary  work  in  the  social 
mechanism,  he  can  at  any  time  get  back  easily  upon  his  rood 
— his,  and  open  to  him — then  it  is  equally  his  own  fault  if  he 
starve.  In  a  simple  state  of  society,  the  worst  problems  of 
poverty  easily  adjust  themselves  by  the  turning  of  men  to  the 
soil,  in  which  they  have  their  own  place  reserved  for  them, 
and  to  which  they  find  their  way  readily.  When  the  school- 
teacher or  carpenter  is  hard  up  and  can  get  no  pupils  or  jobs, 
he  shuts  the  school-house  or  the  shop  and -goes  back  to  farm- 
ing— sure,  at  least,  of  a  living. 

Thus  no  grave  problems  of  poverty  grow  up  while  every  man 
either  stands  on  his  own  acre  or  by  it. 

But,  as  soon  as  this  condition  of  things  changes,  the  whole 
state  of  a  society  changes  with  it ;  changes  seriously  and  omi- 
nously. If  a  man  who  has  left  farming  and  gone  to  some  other 
branch  of  social  labor  find  himself  with  no  work  offering,  and 
find  that  he  has  no  longer  left  him  his  old  farm,  and  that  no 
other  farm  opens  anywhere,  then  he  is  in  a  new  and  sad  plight — 
face  to  face  for  the  first  time  with  absolute  want.  If  no  work 
open  and  no  friendly  help  tide  him  along,  he  is  likely  to 
starve  to  death.  Take  an  island  where  the  area  of  land  is 
definitely  limited,  and  the  problem  states  itself  at  once  to  the 
mind  clearly  and  conclusively.  When  all  the  island  is  held  by 


68  HELPLESS    WITHOUT  IT. 

others,  who  will  not  part  with  any  of  it,  the  man  out  of  work  is 
utterly  helpless. 

He,  though  a  free  man  theretofore,  will  then  be  very  ready 
to  get  a  bit  of  earth  on  which  to  raise  potatoes  upon  any  terms. 
Necessity  knows  no  choice.  He  will  pay  any  share  of  the  prod- 
ucts of  a  bit  of  ground  to  the  owner,  so  that  he  can  squeeze 
out  a  bare  living.  He  will  even  sell  himself  to  the  lord  of  land 
and  become  a  part  of  his  estate,  if  thus  he  can  have  food  and 
live. 

If  he  be  the  only  man  thus  situated,  his  case  is  forlorn 
enough  ;  but  if  he  be  one  of  many  in  the  same  situation,  his 
condition  is  made  worse  by  each  additional  hungry  man  who  is 
seeking  a  chance  to  live. 

Precisely  what  would  thus  come  to  pass  on  an  imaginary 
island  has  actually  come  to  pass  upon  our  very  real  globe.  In 
early  and  simple  stages  of  society  every  man  either  held  in  re- 
serve his  own  share  of  mother  earth  or  knew  that  he  w^mld 
have  no  trouble  in  finding  a  bit  of  ground  that  he  could  till. 
The  poorest  man,  busied  with  the  other  tasks  of  society,  felt 
himself  independent  in  the  consciousness  that  he  could  get 
back  on  the  land  and  take  care  of  himself. 

In  ways  which  we  need  not  now  follow,  this  early  state  of 
society  has  practically  disappeared  from  every  country  of 
Europe,  and  is  rapidly  disappearing  from  our  own  country. 
Land  no  longer  so  abounds  in  Europe  that  any  one  can  go  out 
and  take  possession  of  a  bit.  It  is  all  held  for  use  in  some 
way,  if  capable  of  any  use.  It  is  no  longer  held  by  society  at 
large,  as  was  once  the  case,  securing  every  individual's  share 
in  the  fields  of  the  commune.  It  is  held  by  private  parties. 
There  is  not  an  available  rood  of  ground  in  England  to  which 
a  starving  workman  may  turn  and  say,  "  I  have  a  right  to  that; 
it  will  support  me."  As  this  state  of  things  came  into  exist- 


LABOR'S  LOSS  OF  LAND.  69 

ence,  men  who  were  unable  to  find  work  in  other  labors  were 
rendered  helpless,  glad  to  be  dependent,  content  to  occupy  a 
wee  bit  of  ground  on  crushing  terms,  thankful  at  last  in  the 
worst  extremities  to  enslave  themselves  to  the  lord  of  land  and 
become  his  personal  property,  like  the  land  they  worked  for 
him,  in  return  for  food.  These  are  well-known  facts  of  history 
in  Europe. 

So  to-day  the  worst  feature  of  the  position  of  labor  in  Eu- 
rope is  that,  with  the  private  ownership  of  all  available  land, 
labor  is  practically  helpless  when  the  periodic  stagnations  of 
industry  and  trade  leave  it  idle.  Of  course,  I  say  "  helpless  " 
with  well-understood  modifications.  Colonization  opens  an 
escape  for  Europe  ;  and  colonization  is  being  used  now,  as 
perhaps  never  before  in  the  history  of  man,  to  relieve  the  prob- 
lem. It  does  so  simply  by  enabling  men  to  get  at  land  in  other 
countries,  where  the  process  gradually  repeats  itself. 

The  problem  is  made  vastly  worse  than  it  need  be  in  the  Old 
World  by  the  growth  in  most  countries  of  land  monopolies — the 
concentration  of  huge  estates  in  single  hands.  About  seven 
thousand  persons  hold  four  fifths  of  the  soil  of  Great  Britain. 
Ten  or  twelve  persons  own  half  the  land  of  Scotland. 

Now,  so  long  as  the  supply  of  land  in  some  countries  was 
practically  unlimited,  it  was  possible  to  blind  one's  eyes  to  the 
bearings  of  the  customs  of  land  tenure  upon  the  problem  of 
poverty.  But  we  are  rapidly  nearing  the  limits  of  available 
land  in  the  countries  which  have  hitherto  opened  outlets  for 
surplus  labor.  As  though  nature  meant  to  hurry  up  the  land 
issue  upon  our  civilization,  a  hot-house  forcing  of  these  tend- 
encies of  land  monopoly  is  going  on  in  the  new  countries. 

In  Australia,  that  magnificent  empire  of  the  South  Seas, 
there  is  already  the  shadow  of  the  Old-World  curse. 

An   Australian   paper  thus   sums  the  results  of  a  commis- 


70  MONOPOLIES  OF  LAND. 

sion  appointed  to  inquire  into  the  working  of  the  land  laws, 
under  which  gigantic  speculations  in  land  have  been  going  on  : 

Nothing  more  damnatory  of  the  existing  system  of  land  alienation  by 
free  selection,  as  well  as  by  auction,  can  be  conceived,  and  the  details 
given  of  the  war  of  classes  it  has  engendered  are  perfectly  hideous  in  their 
deformity. 

Vast  tracts  of  country  rendered  useless  by  a  carefully  planned  strategy 
of  preemption,  dummying,  or  purchase  at  auction  ;  vast  estates  built  up 
out  of  the  wrecks  of  once  thriving  homesteads,  or  by  the  unauthorized  yet 
successful  amalgamation  of  adjacent  squattages  ;  whole  districts,  once  the 
populous  seats  of  rural  industry,  now  desolate  and  silent.  These  are  only 
a  few  of  the  tokens  by  which  the  advance  of  the  fell  destroyer,  land  mo- 
nopoly, is  traced. 

What  the  process  going  on  in  our  country  is,  no  one  who 
keeps  his  eyes  open  needs  to  be  told.  The  proper  enough 
policy  of  encouraging  the  development  of  railroads  in  our 
newer  sections  has  been  pushed  to  such  an  excess,  through  the 
influence  of  powerful  corporations,  that  the  national  govern- 
ment has  already  deeded  away  to  these  companies  208,344,263 
acres — an  empire  over  six  times  as  large  as  the  State  of  New 
York. 

Foreign  capital  is  rapidly  joining  in  the  land  speculation 
that  is  mounting  higher  with  each  new  decade.  Every  few  days 
we  read  in  the  papers  of  vast  blocks  of  land  in  the  South  and 
West  being  bought  up  by  European  capitalists  and  companies. 

Of  course,  both  in  the  case  of  the  railroads  and  of  foreign 
capital,  these  huge  land  holdings  are  to  be  broken  up  into 
small  sections  and  resold  to  settlers  or  to  lesser  speculators. 

But,  through  this  speculative  rush  for  land  on  the  part  of  capi- 
tal, it  has  come  to  pass  that  by  the  end  of  our  first  centennial 
of  independence  this  nation,  which  thought  it  held  an  exhaust- 
less  reserve  of  land  open  freely  to  all  comers,  finds  itself 
already  practically  at  the  end  of  its  free  lands.  While  engaged 


OUR    WASTED  DOWRY.  •jl 

in  experimenting  in  co-operative  colonization  a  few  years  since, 
I  found  out,  to  my  exceeding  surprise,  that  the  United  States 
Government  held  very  little  land  open  to  occupation  under  the 
old  homestead  law,  'that  was  worth  occupying.  Of  course 
there  is  any  quantity  of  good  land  to  be  had  still  of  these 
capitalistic  companies  cheaply  enough,  but  it  is  some  thing  of  a 
shock  to  realize  that  we  have  already  run  through  with  the 
splendid  dower  of  public  lands  which  was  our  pride  and  our 
security  against  the  Old-World  social  disorders.  Carlyle  used 
to  say,  in  his  savage  way,  that  it  was  to  our  abundance  of  free 
land  we  owed  our  exemption  from  European  pauperism,  and 
he  was  right.  This  is  what  is  making  the  outlook  of  labor  so 
much  darker  of  late  in  our  country.  Nature's  provision  for 
the  relief  of  want  is  being  rapidly  closed  against  the  poorest 
and  most  needy  laborers,  who,  to  get  good  land,  must  now  go 
a  long  way  and/tfy  for  it  at  the  end  of  a  costly  journey.  It  is 
the  beginning  of  the  end  of  our  day-dream  of  room  for  all 
and  plenty  for  every  one. 

And,  to  add  to  this  evil,  the  modern  tendency  to  vast  capi- 
talistic industry  is  making  itself  felt  in  agriculture  in  our 
country  as  nowhere  else  in  the  world,  and  with  alarming 
results  and  more  alarming  prospects.  We  are  in  the  midst  of 
nothing  less  than  an  agricultural  revolution.  As  by  magic, 
bonanza  farms  have  sprung  up  in  the  West.  Farms  of  thou- 
sands of  acres  are  getting  to  be  quite  common.  We  hear  of 
farms  of  5,000,  10,000,  and  even,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Grandin 
farm,  of  40,000  acres.  There  is  one  estate  of  350,000  acres, 
covering  an  area  of  547  square  miles.  Of  course  these  huge 
farms  are  worked  under  new  methods,  by  the  application  of 
modern  machinery.  They  are  simply  big  food  factories,  with 
the  temporary  good  of  the  factory  system,  the  cheapening  of 
its  products,  whether  shoes  or  grain,  but  with  the  permanent 


72  BONANZA   FARM. 

evils  of  the  factory  system  reproducing  themselves  in  agri 
culture.  These  food  factories  are  worked  exhaustively,  being 
mere  speculations  from  which  capital  hopes  soon  to  retire  ;  and 
in  which,  therefore,  it  has  no  regard  fof  the  future  fertility  of 
the  land.  They  are  worked  by  machinery  ;  that  is,  by  few 
men.  On  the  35o,ooo-acre  estate  one  hundred  men  are  em- 
ployed. These  men  are  hired  according  to  the  needs  of  the 
different  seasons  ;  so  that,  while  during  the  three  summer 
months  there  may  be  a  large  body  of  laborers  employed,  the 
winter  finds  only  a  handful  on  the  ground.  These  men  have 
no  hold  of  the  land  they  work,  nor  does  the  land  hold  them. 

Instead  of  a  settled,  free,  farmer-population,  building  up 
homes,  developing  villages  and  towns,  laying  the  foundation 
for  a  'sound  society,  we  have  gangs  of  hired  laborers,  drawn 
from  a  distance,  herded  on  the  ground  during  the  busy  season 
and  then  turned  loose  to  shift  for  themselves  ;  men  trained 
in  alternate  hard  toil  and  loafing,  making  no  homes,  furnishing 
the  recruits  for  those  bodies  of  tramps  which  of  late  years,  in 
dull  times,  the  West  has  found  roaming  around  with  constant 
danger  to  society. 

If  this  system  continues  and  develops,  it  will  turn  out  a  class 
of  agricultural  laborers  wholly  new  to  our  country,  incipient 
paupers  and  criminals  where  we  looked  to  see  a  hardy  yeo- 
manry. It  may  not  continue.  Theorists  are  sure  that  it  will 
not  continue  ;  that  it  will  speedily  give  way  to  other  and  safer 
forms  of  agriculture.  Perhaps  it  will.  But  as  it  is  simply  the 
action  in  agriculture  of  the  tendencies  making  themselves  felt, 
and  increasingly  felt,  in  every  form  of  industry — the  tenden- 
cies developed  by  the  monster  forces  of  our  age — the  prospect 
is  of  an  indefinite  continuance  of  this  state  of  things  and  of  a 
vast  increase  of  it. 

Back  of  all  this,  we  can  trace  the  working  of  yet  graver  evil 


TENANT  FARMERS.  73 

tendencies  in  our  system  of  land  tenure.  A  study  of  the 
United  States  Census  Reports,  such  as  that  given  to  them  by 
Mr.  George  and  by  Mr.  Moody,  whose  deductions  I  have  not 
seen  refuted,  reveals  the  alarming  fact  that  our  farming  popu- 
lation is  steadily  losing  the  character  of  free  owners  of  the 
land,  and  becoming  in  reality  a  body  of  tenant-farmers.  The 
number  of  farms  held  free  of  mortgages  is  rapidly  decreasing, 
while  the  extent  of  the  liens  held  upon  them  is  as  rapidly  in- 
creasing. 

A  steady  rise  in  rent  is  going  on  over  the  world  ;  with,  of 
course,  local  and  temporary  exceptions.  Everywhere  in  the 
Old  World  we  hear  of  "  rent  "  as  the  burden  that  bears  most 
heavily  upon  labor.  When  news  of  some  fresh  agrarian 
movement  comes,  we  have  grown  to  expect  to  find  complaints 
against  rent,  as  in  France  and  Spain  and  Germany  and, 
notably,  in  Ireland.  In  the  cities,  rent  is  literally  eating  up 
wages  and  small  salaries. 

There  is  no  difficulty  in  accounting  for  this  fact.  Every 
work  of  society  must  be  done  upon  land.  Those  who  control 
the  land,  control  every  thing.  All  that  is  done  to  develop 
society  makes  for  their  gain.  The  more  people  that  crowd  a 
city  or  a  country,  the  more  demand  is  there  for  land,  the 
higher  the  rent  it  will  bring.  The  greater  the  skill  and  enter- 
prise developed  and  the  richer  the  accumulation  of  society  in 
all  that  makes  a  civilization,  the  more  is  the  value  of  the 
land  on  which  it  all  rests  enhanced.  Numbers  and  wealth 
alike  run  up  rent.  It  grows  without  effort  of  land-owners,  by 
the  efforts  of  every  one  else. 

Now,  this  tendency  we  see  being  forced  forward  also  en  our 
soil.  How  preposterous  have  rents  become  in  this  city  !  They 
are  revolutionizing  the  character  of  the  city,  and  making  it 
one  in  which  only  the  rich  and  poor  will  stay — a  city  of  ex- 


74 


RENT  RISING, 


tremes.  And,  while  rents  are  higher  here  than  elsewhere, 
they  are  steadily  becoming  higher  in  all  our  cities  and  towns, 
as  far  as  I  can  see. 

Farming  land  is  experiencing  the  same  tendency.  The 
selling  price  of  good  land  in  parts  of  the  country  where  agri- 
culture has  any  chance  of  profit  in  it,  advances  decade  by  de- 
cade ;  which  is  saying  that  rent  advances  steadily. 

Thus  the  very  progress  of  civilization  makes  for  land  as 
against  labor  ;  shutting  men  off  from  the  free  access  to  mother 
earth,  whose  bounteous  breasts  are  stored  with  the  food  of 
man  ;  making  the  landless  increasingly  dependent,  and  laying 
ever  heavier  burdens  of  rent  upon  them,  deepening  thus  their 
poverty. 

Christendom  is  wakening  up  at  last  to  this  truth.  The 
problem  of  "  land  "  is  everywhere  in  Europe  forcing  itself  to 
the  fore  front  of  the  social  agitation.  The  "  nationalization  of 
the  land  "  is  the  cry  which  is  evidently  going  to  crystallize  the 
forces  of  labor.  The  astonishing  sale  of  Henry  George's  book, 
"  Progress  and  Poverty,"  is  a  sign  of  the  times  which  ought  to 
open  the  eyes  of  the  most  optimistic  believers  in  the  gospel  of 
"whatever  is  is  right."  In  England,  men  like  Mr.  Wallace,  the 
eminent  scientist,  and  William  Morris,  the  poet  and  decorator, 
are  heading  the  movement  for  the  nationalizing  of  the  land  of 
England.  A  shrewd  observer  of  affairs  said  to  me  several 
years  ago  that  the  Irish  were  evidently  to  be  the  instruments, 
in  the  hand  of  Providence,  of  working  out  the  problem  of  our 
land  tenure  to  its  bitter  conclusion,  and  of  thus  bringing  on 
the  issue  of  the  true  tenure  of  land.  So  it  seems  certainly. 

Our  own  country  will  not  for  a  good  while  find  this  problem 
the  urgent  one  that  it  already  is  in  the  Old  World  ;  but  it  is 
only  a  question  of  time.  The  same  tendencies  are  working,  as 
we  have  seen,  and  are  working  toward  the  same  results. 


THE   COMING    QUESTION.  75 

Already  an  organization,  bearing  the  taking  name  of  "  The 
American  Free  Soil  Society,"  is  in  the  field  to  open  aforetime 
the  agitation  of  this  fundamental  question. 

Sooner  or  later,  our  civilization  must  face  the  task  of  a 
radical  reorganization  of  its  system  of  land  tenure,  and  of  the 
outworking  of  a  system  which  shall  in  some  way  guard  against 
land  monopoly,  and  turn  private  property  in  land  into  personal 
occupation  of  a  public  property,  the  common  soil  of  the 
commonwealth.  This  is  no  brand-new  revolutionary  notion. 
Great  thinkers  and  cautious,  like  John  Stuart  Mill  and  Herbert 
Spencer,  have  seen  the  oncoming  of  this  question.  They  have 
discovered  the  principle  that  the  soil  of  a  nation  belongs  to 
the  nation — the  body  of  the  people  ;  that  property  in  it  has  a 
peculiar  character  of  its  own,  quite  distinguishable  from  the 
character  of  property  in  any  thing  else  ;  that  it  is  nature's  pro- 
vision for  the  common  necessities  of  man,  and  as  such  must  be 
regulated  in  the  interests  of  the  commonwealth  ;  that  it  is 
perfectly  open  to  a  people  at  any  time  to  refashion  its  tenure 
of  land  as  may  seem  best  to  its  wisest  heads.  Indeed  this  new 
theory  is  simply  a  return  upon  an  immemorially  old  system  ; 
upon  the  feudal  tenure  which  vested  the  title  to  the  whole  land 
of  a  nation  in  its  king  ;  upon  the  land  communism  which 
ruled  for  ages  among  nearly  all  peoples,  and  of  which  traces 
still  linger  in  "  the  commons  "  of  England,  the  "All-mend"  of 
Switzerland,  and  other  archaic  rights. 

Life  moves  in  a  cycle,  and  society,  like  the  individual,  often 
takes  up  in  manhood  some  custom  or  belief  which  it  had  in 
youth  hastily  thrown  away. 

As  a  practical  aid  to  the  re-establishing  of  better  relations 
between  labor  and  land,  I  would  suggest  the  organization  by 
the  national  government  of  colonization.  Colonization  has 
always  been  the  natural  relief  of  overcrowded  centres.  In  this 


76  STEPS    TOWAXD   SOLUTION. 

way  surplus  labor  has  gone  back  to  the  soil.  Our  country  has 
been  built  up  by  colonization.  Now  the  abler  classes  of  labor 
will  undoubtedly  take  care  of  themselves  in  this  respect,  as  in 
others.  The  mass  of  men,  however,  who  most  need  this 
salvation,  need  to  have  a  helping  and  guiding  hand  in  gaining 
it.  They  don't  know  where  to  go,  nor  how  to  go,  nor  what  to  do 
should  they  go.  They  must  have  the  initiative  taken  for  them 
by  superior  intelligence  and  power.  Where  colonies  are 
planned  and  organized  and  directed  by  capable  men,  the 
feeble  and  the  dull  can  be  led  back  to  the  land  and  made  self- 
supporting  on  it.  This  has  been  amply  shown  on  our  own 
shores.  What  a  wise  work  for  the  state  !  It  can  be  done  as 
business,  and  not  as  charity — in  the  form  of  advances  by  the 
government.  Thus  the  state  would  be  relieving  the  East 
while  building  up  the  West  and  the  South. 

Plainly,  any  refashioning  of  the  tenure  of  land  must  come, 
after  due  education  of  the  public  mind,  through  legislation. 
And  such  legislation,  like  the  education  that  precedes  it — of 
which  indeed  it  is  but  the  continuation,  an  educative  function 
of  the  state — should  proceed  slowly  and  progressively,  in  the 
application  of  the  principle  of  the  common  ownership  of  the 
soil  by  the  people.  The  principle  must  first  be  recognized  by 
law  in  clear  and  simple  cases,  and  then  it  can  be  led  along 
towards  further  applications,  as  we  ripen  for  them. 

As  such  an  initial  measure  of  legislation,  I  would  respect- 
fully suggest  an  enactment  by  Congress  making  all  mineral  re- 
sources hereafter  to  be  opened  the  property  of  the  people  ;  to 
be  held  in  trust  for  the  commonwealth  by  the  state. 

Thus,  between  the  upper  and  the  nether  mill-stone — between 
capital  and  land — labor  is  ground  as  we  see  it  to-day. 

And,  therefore,  the  true  cure  of  our  present  social  disorder 


SUMMAR  Y.  77 

will  be  found  only  in  such  social  alteratives  as  will  work  an 
organic  change  in  our  civilization.  The  diagnosis  of  the  dis- 
ease is  about  as  much  as  we  can  hope  to  achieve  in  our  day. 
Then,  through  patient  study  and  much  experimenting,  we  may 
hope  to  grope  slowly  toward  the  true  remedies.  Meanwhile, 
it  is  all-important  that  we  should  recognize  the  gravity  of  our 
disorder,  and  its  general  nature,  and  thus  encourage  the  con- 
sultations that  the  case  demands. 

The  ameliorating  treatment  suggested  in  the  earlier  part  of 
my  talk  is  of  value  chiefly  in  getting  the  body  politic  ready  for 
the  more  heroic  measures,  whether  of  medicine  or  surgery, 
which  must,  sooner  or  later,  be  ordered  by  our  social  doctors  ; 
one  or  two  tentative  experiments  towards  which  I  have  ventured 
to  suggest. 

IV. 

SUMMARY     OF    CONCLUSIONS    AS    TO    THE    CAUSES   OF     LABOR'S 

POVERTY. 

To  recapitulate  the  suggestions  which  I  have  to  offer  : 

Labor  is  at  fault,  and  needs  to  develop  greater  ability  and  in- 
terest in  its  work  ;  more  thrift ;  larger  powers  of  combination 
and  better  methods  in  combination  ;  the  substitution  of  arbitra- 
tion and  co-operation  for  strikes  ;  the  building  up  in  its  trades 
unions  of  centres  of  political  action. 

Capital  is  at  fault,  and  needs  to  develop  greater  personal  in- 
terest in  its  employees  ;  to  create  for  them  in  their  surroundings 
the  interest  that  their  work  so  largely  lacks  ;  to  bind  its  men  to 
itself  through  a  system  of  industrial  partnership  ;  to  prevent 
strikes  by  arbitration  ;  to  make  out  of  its  brains  and  means  and 
position  of  control  a  real  captaincy  of  industry. 

The  general  world  of  business  is  at  fault  in  its  anarchic 


78  RECOMMENDA  TIONS. 

system  of  industry  and  trade,  alternating  between  fevers  of 
speculative  production  and  congestive  chills  in  which  labor  is 
left  idle  in  the  market ;  in  its  vast  monopolies  of  common 
necessities  and  common  services  ;  in  its  wellnigh  total  disre- 
gard of  humanitarian  considerations  in  seeking  investments. 

Philanthropy  is  at  fault  in  its  unwise  and  obsolete 
methods. 

Society  at  large  is  at  fault  in  its  thoughtlessness  and  selfish- 
ness, its  luxury  and  extravagance,  and  its  manifold  wastes. 

Municipal  governments  are  at  fault,  in  not  taking  civil  ad- 
ministration out  of  national  politics  and  making  it  wholly  a 
matter  of  wise  corporate  management  ;  in  their  dishonest  and 
wasteful  administration  ;  in  the  burdens  of  debt  thus  imposed 
on  the  people  ;  in  parting  lightly  with  valuable  franchises  ;  in 
encouraging  intemperance,  by  their  multiplication  of  grog- 
shops ;  in  allowing  the  poor  to  be  housed  as  they  are.* 

State  governments  are  at  fault  in  not  providing  a  system  of 
industrial  education  in  connection  with  the  common  schools  ; 
in  legislating  freely  for  the  interests  of  capital  while  neglecting 
the  needs  of  labor  ;  in  establishing  no  control  of  the  great  cor- 
porations which  they  charter  and  endow  with  munificent  privi- 
leges ;  in  allowing  the  present  license  of  gambling  in  the  neces- 
sities of  life,  and  of  monopolizing  the  most  important  resources 
of  the  people  ;  in  "not  establishing  labor  bureaus. 

The  national  government  is  at  fault  in  various  respects, 
concerning  which  I  sum  my  suggestions  into  propositions  which 
I  respectfully  suggest  to  this  committee  as  possibly  worthy  of 
being  submitted  to  the  Senate  of  the  United  States  : 

(1)  Tariff  reform. 

(2)  A  national  bureau  pf  labor. 

*  The  lines  of  responsibility  of  civic  and  state  authorities  overlap  and  are 
not  readily  separable  at  times. 


FUNCTIONS  OF   THE   STATE.  79 

(3)  Legislation  concerning  the    great  transcontinental  rail- 
roads, and  the  appointment  of  a  national  railroad  commission. 

(4)  The  establishment  of  postal  savings  banks. 

(5)  The  further  fostering  of  industrial  education. 

(6)  A  better  system  of  patent  privileges. 

(7)  The  limitation  of  the  right  of  bequest. 

(8)  The   organization   of   colonization   from  our    crowded 
centres  to  our  newer  regions. 

(9)  The  reclaiming  of  public  lands  whose  grants  have  be- 
come forfeited,  and  the  return  to  the  old  policy  of  preserving 
all  public  lands  for  actual  settlers. 

(10)  The  reservation  of  future  mineral  resources  as  public 
property. 

Back  of  all  these  responsibilities  lie  those  of  our  capitalistic 
system  of  industry  and  of  our  tenure  of  land,  concerning  which 
the  time  seems  to  me  unripe  for  other  action  than  that  already 
suggested. 

The  propositions  concerning  the  action  of  the  national  gov- 
ernment are,  of  course,  open  to  one  serious  objection — apart 
from  all  other  criticism  that  they  may  deserve.  They  look  to 
a  considerable  increase  of  the  functions  of  the  state,  already 
burdened  with  heavy  responsibilities  and  developing  now  a 
dangerous  bureaucracy.  Our  prevailing  theories  favor  the 
minimizing  of  state  action,  and  regard  any  further  assumption 
of  offices  by  government  as  a  reaction  and  not  a  progress  ;  a 
return  towards  the  obsolete  ideal  of  a  paternal  government.  I 
recognize  the  danger  in  every  increase  of  functions  by  the 
state,  but  I  see  the  danger  that  lies  in  the  avoidance  of  such 
increase  of  function  ;  an  even  greater  danger,  as  it  seems  to  me. 

Apart  from  any  theorizing,  the  whole  trend  of  our  social  life 
is  forcing  on  our  age  such  increased  action  by  the  state,  in  the 
very  teeth  of  what  has  been  accepted  as  the  gospel  of  political 


8O  FUNCTIONS  OF  THE   STA  TE. 

economy.  Doctrinaires  prove  powerless  before  facts.  Eng- 
land, the  home  of  the  non-interference  dogma,  has  been  driven 
on  from  one  step  to  another  in  the  direction  of  larger  state 
action,  out  of  the  felt  necessities  of  the  situation. 

Thus,  within  a  few  years,  we  have  seen  the  development  of 
the  postal  savings  bank,  the  purchase  of  the  telegraph  lines, 
and  the  organization  of  the  parcels-post.  Within  a  decade  the 
state  has  added  to  its  functions  the  offices  of  banker  and  tele- 
grapher and  expressman,  and  the  country  lives  and  thrives. 
Necessity  has  dictated  a  slow  feeling  of  the  way  in  this  direc- 
tion, which  is  all  that  I  suggest.  The  state  should  avoid 
assuming  any  new  office  until  that  office  is  fairly  forced  upon 
it,  by  the  demands  of  the  people  or  the  exigencies  of  society  ; 
but,  then,  it  should  not  hesitate  to  take  up  the  work  thus  plainly 
indicated  for  it.  The  work  of  the  Department  in  one  of  whose 
buildings  we  are  now  meeting — the  post-office — is  the  best  vin- 
dication of  the  possibility  of  a  capable  and  honest  administra- 
tion of  a  huge  business  with  which  no  private  company  could 
be  trusted. 

The  introduction  of  a  real  civil-service  reform  is  the  indis- 
pensable preparation  for  such  higher  functions  on  the  part  of 
government. 

If  there  is  any  truth  in  analogy,  we  must  expect  society,  as  it 
grows  more  highly  organized,  to  develop  largely  increased 
powers  in  government.  Society  is  an  organism,  as  Mr.  Spencer 
has  taught  us.  It  is,  as  Hobbes  quaintly  taught  in  "  The  Levi- 
athan," a  great  man.  The  human  organism,  as  the  highest 
type  in  nature,  certainly  suggests  the  necessity  of  a  head  pro- 
portionate to  the  quantity  and  quality  of  the  functions  to  be 
carried  on  in  the  body.  T,he  power  ot  co-ordinating  the  func- 
tions of  the  body — the  power  of  the  brain — measures  the  place 
of  an  organism  in  the  scale  of  nature.  An  acephalous  body  is 


THE   SOCIAL  BRAIN.  8 1 

not  supposed  to  be  an  ideal  sort  of  organization  anywhere  out- 
side of  political  economy. 

With  the  steady  and  rapid  increase  in  the  complexity  of  the 
functions  of  the  body  social,  it  is  becoming  more  and  more  a 
vital  necessity  to  evolve  a  great  head,  capable  of  co-ordinating 
all  these  varied  activities — a  head  which  shall  call  to  it  the 
best  blood  of  the  body,  and  build  up  a  large  and  powerful 
brain.* 

*  See  Appendix  for  report  of  the  conversation,  in  committee  session,  fol- 
lowing the  above  testimony,  with  its  elaboration  of  certain  points  touched 
on  above. 


II. 


THE  STORY  OF  CO-OPERATIVE  PRODUCTION 

AND   CO-OPERATIVE  CREDIT   IN   THE 

UNITED  STATES. 


OUTLINE. 

Co-operation  has  more  of  a  story  than  supposed.     Table  of  chief  entries 
in  the  story. 

1.  Co-operative  Production — (i)  Fisheries — (2)  Agriculture — Fourierism 
— Anaheim — Silkville — Co-operative    Colony   Aid   Association — Associate 
Diaries — (3)  Manufactures — Early  Essays — Experiments  between  1870  and 
1880 — Patrons  of  Husbandry — Sovereigns  of  Industry — Somerset  Co-opera- 
tive Foundry — Various  New  Efforts  in  the  Present  Decade — South  Norvvalk 
Hatters — Minneapolis  Barrel  Makers — (4)    Profit-Sharing    Experiments — 
Peacedale  Manufacturing  Company — Mr.  Ara  Cushman — The  Staats  Zeit- 
ung — Brewster  &  Co. — Pillsbury  Flour  Mills. 

2.  Co-operative  Credit — (i)  Banking — (2)  Loan  and  Building  Associa- 
tions— Earlier  Experiments — Revival  after  the  Civil  War — Present  Devel- 
ment  in  Pennsylvania — Story  of  in  Ohio — New  Jersey — Estimate  of  Extent 
of  Societies  in  the  United  States. 


84 


THE  STORY  OF  CO-OPERATIVE   PRODUCTION 

AND  CO-OPERATIVE  CREDIT  IN  THE 

UNITED  STATES  * 


The  history  of  co-operation  in  the  United  States  is  popu- 
.larly  supposed  to  stand  in  need  rather  of  being  made  than  of 
being  written.  Co-operation  in  reality  antedates  the  Revolu- 
tion, and  forms  an  important  chapter  in  the  industrial  history 
of  the  country,  though  not  in  the  "  contents  "  of  Bolles.  The 
Massachusetts  Bureau  of  Statistics  of  Labor  declares  (Report 
of  1877)  that  "there  has  been  for  the  past  twenty-five  years  in 
this  State  an  annual  investment  of  from  $100,000  to  $250,000 
in  co-operative  experiments."  Pennyslvania  and  other  States 
have  invested  far  more  in  this  idea. 

It  is  sadly  true  of  many  of  these  States,  as  of  Massachusetts, 
that  the  average  duration  of  these  experiments,  in  production 
and  distribution  at  least,  has  been  "  from  about  three  to  five 
years."  Other  chapters  of  co-operation,  however,  tell  a  very 
different  story.  Through  failures,  as  through  successes,  co- 
operation has  moved  on  until  it  has  developed  a  volume  of 
business,  which,  if  it  could  be  accurately  measured,  would  as- 
tonish us  all.  Every  line  of  European  co-operation  is  found 
among  us.  We  can  make  little  showing,  indeed,  alongside  of 
the  brilliant  essays  in  co-operative  industry  which  France  has 
*  The  Princeton  Review,  September,  1881. 

85 


86  SCHEDULE    OF  CO-OPERATION. 

outwrought.  The  splendid  success  of  England  in  co-operative 
distribution  has  not  been  approached,  though  our  record  in 
this  department  is  both  larger  and  better  than  the  latest  Amer- 
ican book  on  co-operation  pronounces  it.  We  have,  however, 
carried  co-operative  credit  to  an  extent  that  fairly  rivals  Ger- 
many, and  we  have  evolved  an  original  form  of  co-operation 
in  an  agricultural  industry  which  has  already  assumed  large 
proportions. 

A  sketch  of  this  history  is  all  that  can  as  yet  be  written. 
The  data  for  any  fuller  story  are  to  be  gathered  in  a  search 
which  will  prove  no  holiday  task.  Only  fifteen  States  as  yet 
have  charged  themselves,  through  labor  bureaus  or  otherwise, 
with  studying  the  interests  of  the  wage-workers  ;  and  most  of 
these  bureaus  are  the  growth  of  the  last  half-dozen  years. 
Where  the  States  seek  to  fulfil  this  duty,  they  are  often  foiled 
by  the  indifference  of  the  co-operative  societies,  their  reluc- 
tance to  disclose  their  actual  condition,  their  fear  of  rousing 
the  opposition  of  the  trade,  and  their  suspicion  of  governmental 
scrutiny.  The  records  of  most  of  the  early  experiments  live 
only  in  the  memory  of  their  survivors.  Co-operation  awaits  its 
Old  Mortality,  piously  bent  on  rescuing  from  oblivion  the 
fading  characters  of  these  living  epitaphs. 

The  chief  entries  now  to  be  recorded  in  the  annals  of  Amer- 
ican co-operation  may  be  tabulated  as  follows  : 

1730  (about). — Share  System  introduced  into  New  England  Fisheries. 
1752. — Fire  Assurance  introduced  in  Philadelphia. 

"  The  Philadelphia  Contributionship   for  the  Insurance  of  Houses 
from  Loss  by  Fire."     Benj.  Franklin  first  Director.     Corporation 
still  prospering. 
1767. — Life  Insurance  introduced  in  Philadelphia. 

"  The  Corporation  for  the  Relief  of  Widows  and  Children  of  Clergy- 
men in  the  Communion  of  the  Church  of  England  in  America." 
Composed  of  clergymen.  Still  nourishing. 


SCHEDULE   OF  CO-OPERATION.  8? 

1819. — Mutual  Assurance  bodied  in   a  National  Order — The  Odd-Fellows. 

1820-30. — Owen's  Movement  ;  Socialistic. 

1830-40. — Loan  and  Building  Societies  formed  in  Philadelphia. 

New   England  Association  of  Farmers  and  Mechanics  agitate  the^ 
formation  of  stores. 

Labor  Organizations  in  New  England  open  some  stores. 
1840—50. — Brook  Farm,  Hopedale,  etc. 

Fourierite  Phalanxes. 

New  England  Protective  Union  builds  up  a  system  of  stores  ;  which  at 
their  height  did  a  business  of  about  $2,000,000  per  annum  ;  some 
of  which  still  survive. 

The  earliest  essay  in  Co-operative  Production  :  Tailors'  Association 

in  Boston  (1849). 
1850—60. — Loan  Associations  arise  in   Massachusetts.     Associate   Dairies 

started  in  New  York.     Anaheim. 
1860-70. — Stores. started  in  several  States. 

Productive  Societies  also. 

Revival  of  Building  and  Loan  Associations  in  Pennsylvania. 

Mutual  Assurance  assumes  business  forms. 

Renewed  attempts  at  Co-operative  Production. 

Ship-yard  in  Baltimore  (1865),  in  Boston  (1866)  ;  Machine  Shop  in 
Philadelphia  (1866)  ;    Foundries    in  various   cities ;  Shoe  'Manu- 
factory in  Lynn  and  in  North  Adams  (about  1868)  ;  Cigar  Manu- 
factory in  Westfield,  Mass.  (1869). 
1870-80. — Knights  of  St.  Crispin  agitate  Co-operation. 

Founding  and  growth  and  decline  of  the  Patrons  of  Husbandry ; 
which  Order  claimed  to  save  in  one  year  (1874)  $12,000,000  to  its 
members,  through  its  co-operative  agencies. 

Founding  and  growth  of  the  Knights  of  Honor— a  great  Mutual 
Assurance  Association  still  flourishing. 

Founding,  growth  and  dissolution  of  the  Sovereigns  of  Industry  ; 
which  Order  did  a  co-operative  business  in  one  year  (1877)  of 
$3,000,000  ;  representing  a  saving  to  its  members  of  $420,000  ; 
all  of  its  stores  being  on  the  Rochdale  plan  ;  some  of  which  are 
still  prosperous. 

Scattered  stores  in  many  States  ;  Massachusetts  reporting  15  in- 
dependent stores  organized  since  1870. 

Philadelphia  Industrial  Co-operative  Society  organized  (1875). 


88  FISHERIES. 

Independent  Productive  Societies  in  many  States. 

Rapid  growth  of  Associate  Dairies,  of  which  there  are  now  5,000  in 
the  United  States. 

Rapid  growth  of  Mutual  Assurance  Companies  ;  the  Patrons  of 
Husbandry  having  at  one  time  in  one  State  alone  38  Fire  Insur- 
ance Companies  ;  three  Companies  in  one  county  carrying  over 
$1,000,000  of  risks  ;  New  York  State  claiming  300,000  members 
of  various  Mutual  Assurance  Societies  at  end  of  decade. 

Rapid  growth    of  Building   and  Loan    Societies   in    Pennsylvania 
which  now  number  over  600  in  Philadelphia,  with  a  membership 
of  75,000  and  a  capital  of  $80,000,000  ;  which  number  in  Penn- 
sylvania from  1,500  to  i, 800  ;  which  have  led   to  investment  of 
$100,000,000  in  real-estate  in  Philadelphia  alone. 

Revival  of  Loan  Associations  in  Massachusetts  ;  where  are  now  over 
22  Societies  incorporated,  having  a  total  membership  of  over  6,000. 

Institution  of  Loan  Associations  in  New  Jersey,  Ohio,  California, 
etc.  ;  New  Jersey  reporting  106  Associations  in  1880  ;  Ohio  re- 
porting the  incorporation  of  307  Associations  during  the  seven 
years  preceding  the  report  (1880) ;  total  estimated  Societies 
(1880),  3,000  in  United  States,  with  membership  of  450,000  ;  and 
aggregate  capital  of  $75,000,000. 

Experiments  in  Colonization. 
1880,  et  seq. — Formation  of  the  New  England  Co-operative  Association. 

Revival  of  the  Patrons  of  Husbandry. 

Greatly  quickened  growth  of  Co-operation  in  all  lines. 

Development  of  the  Knights  of  Labor. 

Organization  of  the  Central  Labor  Union. 

Formation  of  the  American  Co-operative  Union. 

Reports  from  all  directions  of  new  enterprises. 

It  is  proposed  now  to  fill  out  somewhat  this  bare  outline  of 
the  story  of  co-operative  production  and  co-operative  credit. 

I.  CO-OPERATIVE  PRODUCTION. 

(i)  Co-operative  Fisheries,  etc. — The  Puritan  settlements  had 
given  a  practical  training  in  the  spirit  of  co-operation,  and  in 
"  the  first  industry  that  demanded  congregation  of  labor  and 
aggregation  of  wealth  "  the  form  of  co-operation  followed.  The 


AGRICULTURE.  89 

share  system  was  introduced  into  the  cod  and  mackerel  fish- 
eries, and  into  whaling,  somewhere  about  1730. 

There  was  a  necessity  for  this,  as,  if  wages  alone  were  paid, 
the  men  would  have  lost  the  stimulus  needful  to  make  the  voy- 
age successful.  When  a  ship  was  built  the  builders  would 
take  shares  in  it — the  painter,  sail-maker,  rigger,  captain  and 
all  who  were  to  man  it.  In  trading,  the  whole  ship  was  divided 
into  sixty-four  shares.  The  builder  would  take  a  large  part,  the 
captain  and  mate  each  one  share  or  one  half  share,  and  so  on 
down  through  the  entire  crew.  The  chief  owner  was  known 
as  "the  Ship's  Husband."  He  determined  the  plans  of  the 
voyage.  In  fisheries,  a  ship  would  be  held  in  five  shares.  The 
owner  held  two  fifths  and  the  crew  (captain,  mates  and  men) 
held  three  fifths.  Profits  were  divided  among  these  conjoint 
owners  according  to  the  shares  held.  The  owner  kept  the  ship 
in  repairs  and  the  whole  company  paid  expenses. 

The  following  item  from  the  records  of  the  island  of  Nan- 
tucket  illustrates  this  primitive  co-operation.  Under  date  of 
June  5,  1672,  a  draught  of  a  proposed  agreement  between 
James  Loper  and  the  proprietors  of  the  island  of  Nantuckket 
runs  thus  :  "5th,  4th  mo.  1672,  Jas.  Loper  doth  Ingage  to  carry 
on  a  design  of  whale  Citching  on  the  Island  of  Nantuckket,  that 
is  the  said  James  Ingages  to  be  a  third  in  all  respeckes,  and 
som  of  the  Town  Ingage  also  to  carry  on  the  other  two  thirds 
with  him  in  like  manner." 

This  good  old  custom  has  continued  more  or  less  in  use 
down  to  our  own  day.  Maine  fishing-smacks  are  still  manned 
after  a  genuine  co-operative  fashion. 

The  merchants  in  the  China  trade  also  identified  the  inter- 
ests of  their  men  with  their  own,  by  a  percentage  on  the  profits 
of  each  voyage. 

(2)   Co-operative  Agriculture. — The  first  wave  of  enthusiasm 


90  FOURIERISM. — ANAHEIM. 

over  co-operation  rose  and  fell  in  the  decade  1820-30,  under 
the  inspiration  of  Robert  Owen  and  his  famous  experiment  in 
New  Harmony.  Eleven  societies  are  known  to  have  been 
founded  during  this  epoch.  Of  these  Indiana  had  four,  New 
York  three,  Ohio  two,  Pennsylvania  one  and  Tennessee  one. 
Their  membership  ranged  from  15  to  900,  and  the  land  brought 
under  cultivation  from  120  acres  to  30,000  acres.  They  lasted 
from  three  months  to  three  years.  These  societies  were  for 
the  most  part  communistic  rather  than  co-operative. 

In  the  decade  1840-50  came  a  remarkable  movement,  the 
result  of  the  social  stir  of  transcendentalism,  quickened  by  the 
Fourierite  propaganda  which  had  been  carried  on  through  the 
New  York  Tribune.  Brook  Farm  (1841-47),  the  child  of  Uni- 
tarianism,  Hopedale  (1841-57),  the  child  of  Universalism,  and 
the  Fourierite  Phalanxes  (1843-47),  were  true  co-operative 
societies,  and  were  based  on  agriculture.  A  few  attempted 
additional  industries.  Most  of  them,  however,  tried  nothing 
but  farming,  over  which  "  they  went  mad."  For  a  while,  a  new 
era  seemed  opening  upon  the  country,  and  the  good  time  com- 
ing appeared  to  be  looming  round  the  corner.  But,  from  a 
variety  of  causes  beyond  their  disproportionate  devotion  to 
farming — from  unwise  choice  of  location,  insufficient  capital, 
lax  admission  of  members,  etc., — all  these  societies  ultimately 
failed,  and  most  of  them  without  any  long  agony  of  hope  de- 
ferred. But  even  the  memory  of  some  is  an  inspiration.  There 
were  about  thirty  of  the  Fourierite  Phalanxes,  of  which  Ohio 
had  eight,  New  York  six,  Pennsylvania  six,  Massachusetts 
three,  Illinois  three,  New  Jersey  two,  Michigan  two,  Wisconsin 
one,  Indiana  one  and  Iowa  one.  They  represented  from  20 
to  450  members,  and  from  200  to  2,394  acres.  They  continued 
in  existence  from  five  months  to  twelve  years,  all  but  one  last- 
ing less  than  five  years  and  most  of  them  less  than  half  that  time. 


SILKVILLE.  91 

The  next  decade  witnessed  a  striking  example  of  successful 
colonization.  Anaheim  (1857,  etc.),  in  Los  Angelos  County, 
California,  was  founded  by  a  company  of  fifty  poor  Germans 
of  San  Francisco,  among  whom  there  was  not  one  farmer. 
They  bought  a  tract  of  over  1,000  acres,  and  wisely  placed  its 
care  in  the  hands  of  the  judicious  originator  of  the  enterprise. 
He  laid  it  out  in  50  twenty-acre  lots  and  50  small  village  lots, 
reserving  a  number  of  acres  for  public  purposes  ;  stocked  the 
farms  with  vines,  and  cultivated  them  by  hired  hands,  while 
the  members  of  the  company  pursued  their  city  trades.  At 
the  end  of  three  years  the  colony  settled  upon  the  estate,  dis- 
tributing the  allotments  equitably  ;  when  the  settlement  passed 
into  the  usual  village  form,  in  which  it  continues  to  prosper. 
In  the  following  decades  (1860-80)  there  were  scattered  at- 
tempts to  introduce  co-operation  into  farming,  accurate  ac- 
counts of  most  of  which  are  not  at  hand.  One  of  the  most 
interesting  of  these  experiments  was  the  Kansas  Co-operative 
Farm,  or  Silkville,  as  it  was  called,  from  its  chief  industry.  It 
was  founded  by  a  Frenchman,  the  Marquis  de  Boissiere.  He 
purchased  3,000  acres,  near  Williamsburgh,  in  Franklin  County, 
in  1869,  on  which  were  a  large  peach  orchard,  400  apple-trees, 
a  vineyard  of  1,200  young  grape-vines,  and  10,000  mulberry 
trees.  In  1873  the  estate  was  sufficiently  well  in  hand  and  the 
plans  matured  enough  to  invite  co-operation,  in  a  circular 
which  outlined  an  attractive  and  varied  industrial  community, 
embodying,  among  many  of  the  ideas  of  Fourier,  "  a  combined 
household."  In  1875  the  building  for  this  household,  accom- 
modating from  80  to  100  persons,  was  completed,  having 
among  its  attractions  a  library  of  1,200  volumes  in  English, 
besides  a  large  number  of  French  and  other  continental  works. 
The  population  has  ranged  from  about  30  to  40  persons,  chil- 
dren included,  and  the  work  has  covered  farming,  stock- 


92  COLONIES. — ASSOCIATE  DAIRIES. 

raising,  fruit-growing,  dairying  and  silk  culture.  It  had 
achieved  a  "substantial  success"  in  1878.  The  distance 
of  the  settlement  from  any  large  market  has  hindered  its 
growth.  It  is  still  in  existence  under  the  original  ownership, 
but  how  far  the  co-operative  features  have  been  continued,  its 
manager  does  not  write. 

The  rapid  development  of  huge  farms  has  drawn  attention 
of  late  to  the  need  of  combination  on  the  part  of  small  farmers, 
and  co-operative  farming  has  been  much  discussed  in  the 
West.  Some  colonies  of  immigrants  have  been  planted,  in 
which  co-operation  was  partially  developed.  During  the  latter 
part  of  the  "  hard  times  "  of  1870-80,  various  attempts  were 
made  to  organize  the  transfer  of  labor  from  the  overcrowded 
centres  of  the  East  to  the  lands  of  the  South  and  West,  in  co- 
operative colonies.  The  Co-operative  Colony  Aid  Association 
of  New  York  planted  one  colony  in  Kansas,  which  was  broken 
up  by  the  universal  drouth  of  1880.  The  return  of  prosperity, 
in  rendering  this  form  of  philanthropy  unnecessary,  made  it 
impracticable  as  a  combination  of  capital  and  labor.  This 
experiment  has,  however,  vindicated  the  business  scheme  on 
which  it  was  based,  and  has  shown  that  it  is  a  perfectly  safe 
investment  to  loan  funds  to  would-be  colonists,  secured  by  the 
improvements  made  on  the  land. 

The  Patrons  of  Husbandry,  a  national  organization  for  the 
spread  of  co-operation  among  farmers,  made  some  experiments 
in  co-operative  colonies.  The  Sovereigns  of  Industry,  a 
national  order  for  the  spread  of  co-operation  among  all  classes 
(lawyers  excepted),  also  had  this  subject  under  consideration, 
but  no  action  seems  to  have  been  taken.  The  successful  set- 
tlements of  the  Shakers,  etc.,  are  communistic,  and  hence  are 
not  further  noticed  here. 

Co-operation   has,  however,  had  an  immense  success  on  a 


MANUFACTURES.  93 

purely  business  basis,  in  the  cheese  factories  and  creameries  of 
the  Associate  Dairies.  In  1851  a  young  dairy  farmer  of 
western  New  York,  on  setting  up  for  himself,  proposed  to  his 
father,  a  skilled  cheese-maker,  to  deliver  milk  daily  to  him  for 
manufacture  into  cheeses.  The  plan  worked  so  well  that  the 
neighbors  joined  and  built  a  factory.  The  great  economy  of 
the  system,  and  the  excellence  of  the  cheeses  produced  under 
this  division  of  labor,  led  to  other  factories.  Their  growth 
was  slow  at  first  and  for  some  time  confined  to  New  York. 
By  1866,  however,  there  were  500  in  that  State  alone,  aver- 
aging 400  cows,  aggregating  200,000  cows,  worth  $8,000,000,  and 
employing  1,000,000  acres,  worth  $40,000,000.  In  1870  there 
were  1,313  cheese  factories  in  the  whole  country,  using  116,- 
466,405  gallons  of  milk,  and  producing  $16,760,569  in  cheeses. 
The  same  methods  were  introduced  into  butter-making  in 
1 86 1,  in  Orange  County,  New  York,  and,  under  the  name  of 
"Creameries,"  butter  factories  have  multiplied  rapidly.  It  is 
estimated  that  there  are  to-day  5,000  of  these  co-operative 
factories  in  the  United  States. 

To  this  system  is  chiefly  due  the  immense  impetus  given  to 
our  dairy  production.  Mulhall's  Balance  Sheet  of  the  World 
(1881)  presents  the  United  States  as  having  the  largest  number 
of  cows  of  any  country,  a  little  over  one  third  of  all  Europe, 
viz.,  33,500,000  cows.  Of  these,  5,600,000  are  for  slaughter, 
leaving  27,900,000  for  dairy  products.  We  exported  in  1881 
nearly  $23,000,000  of  dairy  products,  two  thirds  of  the  value  of 
our  total  product  forty  years  ago. 

(3)  Co-operative  Manufactures. — This  most  difficult  form  of 
co-operation  has  received  comparatively  little  development 
among  us.  A  considerable  number  of  scattered  experiments 
have  been  made  within  the  last  thirty  years,  but  few  have  won 
lasting  success.  Among  the  earlier  essays  may  be  mentioned 


94  MANUFACTURES. 

a  tailors'  association  in  Boston  (1849);  shipyards  in  Baltimore 
(1865),  and  in  Boston  (1866)  ;  a  machine-shop  in  Philadelphia 
(1866)  ;  foundries  in  various  cities — Troy,  Albany,  Cleveland, 
Cincinnati,  St.  Louis  (1865-68) ;  shoe  manufactories  in  Lynn 
and  North  Adams,  Mass.  (dr.  1868)  ;  a  cigar  manufactory  in 
Westfield,  Mass.  (1869)  ;  a  machine-shop  in  Greenfield,  Mass. 
(1870).  The  most  promising  of  these  early  experiments  was 
the  stove  foundry  of  the  Iron  Moulders'  International  Union. 
This  was  started  in  1867,  in  Allegheny  County,  Pa.,  the  10,000 
members  of  the  Union  having  been  expected  to  become  stock- 
holders. The  paid-up  capital,  however,  proved  insufficient  in 
a  critical  moment — the  oft-repeated  experience — and  the  enter- 
prise failed. 

The  decade  1870-80  experienced  a  marked  increase  in  the 
number  of  productive  societies.  In  the  mid-year  of  this  decade, 
Massachusetts  had  sixteen  productive  societies  reporting  to  the 
State,  and  nine  not  reporting,  though  duly  chartered.  All  but 
one  of  these  had  been  organized  since  1870.  The  sixteen  so- 
cieties reporting  gave  an  aggregate  paid-in  capital  of  $114,210. 
The  nine  not  reporting  were  incorporated  for  $47,110.  Other 
societies  were  known  to  exist.  These  societies  were  located  in 
Lowell,  Truro,  Weymouth,  Westborough,  Chelmsford,  East 
Templeton,  Holyoke,  Somerset,  North  Adams,  Newburyport, 
Orange,  Marlborough  (2),  Boston  (2),  Stoneham  (3),  Fall  River 
(4),  Lynn  (4),  Westfield  (8).  Their  work  may  be  classified 
as  follows:  furniture-making  (i),  chair-making  (i),  foundry- 
work  (i),  manufacture  of  gas  (i),  dairy-work  (i),  cotton- 
manufacturing  (i),  printing  (2),  the  building  of  houses  (4),  ci- 
gar-making (5),  boot  and  s*hoe  manufacture  (9).  An  illustra- 
tion of  their  work  may  be  taken  at  random  in  the  Co-operative 
Furniture  Company  of  Orange,  which  in  1879  sold  chamber 
sets  to  the  value  of  $15,743.52.  A  very  promising  association 


MANUFACTURES.  95 

was  the  Rochdale  Cotton  Manufacturing  Association,  of  Fall 
River,  organized  in  1874,  with  a  share  subscription  of  $125,000. 
This  was  the  work  of  a  philanthropic  mill-owner,  whose  family 
took  the  largest  amount  of  the  stock.  It  had  a  short  career. 
Ohio  had  a  number  of  associations  for  manufacturing,  but  the 
co-operative  feature  did  not  long  survive  in  the  few  societies 
that  were  successful.  One  of  these  associations  had  a  capital, 
in  1877,  of  $100,000,  but  lapsed  into  a  joint-stock  concern, 
votes  counting  not  by  persons,  but  by  shares. 

It  is  timely  now  to  recall  the  fact  that  a  number  of  these 
societies  were  the  results  of  strikes.  The  strike  at  North 
Adams,  e.  g.}  on  the  introduction  of  Chinese  labor,  led  to  the 
establishment  of  a  co-operative  shoe-factory.  A  report  says  : 
"  The  men  speak  with  pride  of  their  new  feelings  of  self-re- 
liance and  freedom,  as  well  as  of  the  quality  of  their  work." 
Would  that  our  present  labor  revolts  might  revive  this  "  more 
excellent  way  "  of  striking  !  The  Patrons  of  Husbandry  were 
reported  in  the  Economist  of  November  8,  1876,  as  having 
"  thirty  (30)  manufacturing  asociations,  whose  capital  ranges 
from  $200,000  to  $500,000  ;  .  .  .  sixteen  (16)  grist  mills, 
one  of  which  produces  one  hundred  barrels  of  flour  per  day  ; 
.  .  .  three  (3)  tanneries,  and  six  (6)  smitheries." 

The  Sovereigns  of  Industry  contemplated  entering  upon  this 
field,  and  made  some  essays  in  it,  e.  g.,  the  Kingston  Co-opera- 
tive Foundry  Company,  in  Kingston,  Mass.  Its  members  con- 
sisted chiefly  of  picked  men  from  other  foundries.  It  organ- 
ized with  a  capital  of  $8,000.  Details  of  the  experience  of  this 
and  other  societies  have  vanished  with  the  Order.  It  is  a  pity 
that  our  reformers  are  so  intent  to  "  live  the  epic  "  that  they 
wholly  neglect  "  to  write  it."  The  latest  labor  organization, 
the  Knights  of  Labor,  has  among  its  aims  "  the  establishment 
of  co-operative  institutions,  productive  and  distributive."  It 


g6  SOMERSET  FOUNDRY. 

is  encouraging  to  note  that  this  Order  seeks  "  the  substitution 
of  arbitration  for  strikes."  In  New  York  City,  a  number  of 
attempts  have  been  made  in  different  branches  of  industry. 
A  printers'  co-operative  association  started  in  1867  with  a  capi- 
tal of  $5,000.  In  May,  1870,  its  business  had  grown  so  greatly 
that  it  leased  a  large  building  in  Beekman  Street  and  increased 
its  capital.  The  presses,  types  and  other  material  in  the  office 
were  then  worth  $30,000,  and  the  establishment  employed  fifty 
workmen. 

Perhaps  the  most  notable  success  has  been  achieved  by  one 
of  the  earliest  of  our  productive  societies.  The  Somerset  Co- 
operative Foundry  was  organized  in  1867,  for  the  manufacture 
of  stoves  and  hollow-ware.  Works  belonging  to  a  company 
that  had  been  out  of  business  for  two  or  three  years  were  pur- 
chased for  $6,500.  Shares  were  placed  at  $100  and  the  stock 
at  $15,000.  In  the  outset  109  shares  were  taken  in  numbers 
varying  from  one  to  five.  At  first  only  half  a  dozen  men  could 
be  supplied  with  work.  In  a  few  months  a  change  of  manage- 
ment became  necessary,  and  the  year  closed  with  a  small  loss. 
At  the  end  of  the  second  year  a  dividend  of  13  \  per  cent,  was 
declared.  The  third  year  made  about  the  same  dividend.  In 
1871,  229  shares  were  reported  as  held  by  forty-two  persons,  in 
numbers  varying  from  one  to  ten,  the  latter  being  the  maximum 
allowed.  Twenty-five  stockholders  were  at  work,  and  six 
others  had  been  employed  at  different  times.  Of  the  remaining 
eleven,  some  were  in  business  for  themselves,  some  were  in 
good  positions  under  other  employers,  and  a  few  were  not 
practical  workmen.  All  but  a  half  dozen  of  the  members 
were  married,  and  all  but  two  were  Americans.  Wages  ranged 
from  $50  to  $125  a  month.  They  were  better  than  in  other 
establishments.  The  agent  was  paid  $100  a  month.  He  had 
experience  as  a  practical  workman  and  in  general  business. 


NEW  EXPERIMENTS.  97 

The  money  gain  to  some  of  the  men  had  in  1871  amounted  to 
from  $300  to  $500  more  than  they  would  have  received  in  the 
ordinary  way  of  working.  All  dividends  were  allowed  to 
accrue  to  the  working  capital,  at  least  up  to  1871.  The  busi- 
ness done  in  that  year  amounted  to  $60,000.  By  1876  the 
association  had  added  $30,000  to  the  surplus  fund,  and  had 
paid  out  $14,600  in  dividends.  At  that  date  its  stockholders 
numbered  fifty-three,  of  whom  twenty-nine  worked  for  the 
company.  This  society  is  still  in  prosperous  existence.  It 
reported  for  1881  a  paid-up  capital  of  $30,000,  with  reserves  of 
$16,524.  The  secret  of  this  fine  success  is  probably  given  in  a 
report  to  the  State  Bureau  of  Labor  :  "  In  the  earlier  stages  of 
the  enterprise  a  great  deal  of  self-denial  had  to  be  practised, 
but  a  willingness  was  shown  to  submit  to  any  personal  annoy- 
ance rather  than  allow  the  concern  to  suffer  embarrassment." 

New  experiments  are  being  reported  continually..  Chicago 
has  lately  started  a  harness-makers'  association,  and  a  furni- 
ture-makers' society.  The  co-operative  furniture  manufactory 
of  St.  Louis  employs  no  workmen,  and  claims  to  do  one  of 
the  largest  businesses  of  this  kind  in  the  city. 

The  following  items  give  an  indication  of  what  is  now  going 
on  in  this  direction.  Some  thirty  shoemakers  of  Burlington, 
New  Jersey,  who  were  members  of  a  union,  and  whose  em- 
ployers refused  to  retain  them  on  this  account,  were  reported 
lately  as  preparing  to  start  a  co-operative  shoe-factory.  The 
Co-operative  Granite  Company  of  West  Quincy,  Mass.,  was 
recently  said  to  be  making  considerable  improvements  in  order 
to  meet  its  increasing  business.  A  co-operative  tannery  has 
been  lately  started  in  Chicago.  The  Co-operative  Tool  Com- 
pany, of  Paris,  Illinois,  is  said  to  be  receiving  more  orders 
than  it  can  fill.  A  co-operative  stove  company  has  been 
organized  in  Buffalo.  A  co-operative  company  for  the  manu- 


98          CONCORD  PRINTERS. — NOR  WALK  HA  TTERS. 

facture  of  all  kinds  of  soap  was  in  formation  in  Richmond,  not 
long  since.  The  Frankford  Co-operative  Manufacturing  Com- 
pany was,  in  July  of  1885,  running  eight  looms  for  the  manu- 
facture of  table-cloths.  The  true  Rochdale  principle  of  giving 
each  shareholder  but  one  vote,  however  many  shares  he  might 
hold,  was  adopted  in  this  organization,  as  in  several  other 
recent  enterprises. 

In  the  Lynn  Knights  of  Labor  co-operative  shoe  factory  the 
eight-hour  rule  has  been  put  in  force.  A  line  of  machinery 
has  been  provided  at  a  cost  of  $4,000.  About  sixty  male  and 
female  hands  are  employed.  This  is  the  first  factory  in  Lynn 
to  adopt  the  eight-hour  plan,  and  every  person  employed  re- 
ceives a  percentage  of  the  receipts  from  the  works,  making  it 
strictly  co-operative.  The  company's  intentions  are  to  sell 
directly  to  the  retailers,  and  already  it  has  received  a  number 
of  applications  from  retailers  in  various  sections  of  the  country 
asking  for  the  sole  agency  of  the  goods  in  their  respective 
localities. 

There  have  been  several  really  important  ventures  made  of 
late  in  co-operative  production.  In  the  spring  of  1884,  thirty- 
four  members  of  Typographical  Union  No.  6  formed  the  Con- 
cord Co-operative  Printing  Company.  A  small  plant  was 
located  in  a  little  room  on  Ann  Street,  but  a  short  time  suf- 
ficed to  outgrow  these  humble  quarters  and  the  establishment 
moved  to  Centre  Street.  Here  one  floor  was  soon  so  crowded 
with  men  and  material  that  another  story  was  hired,  and  now 
the  establishment  is  doing  an  excellent  business.  It  employs 
seventeen  members,  regularly,  at  salaries  averaging  (for  the 
men)  about  $18  a  week.  ,  It  owns  about  $3,500  worth  of 
material.  Instead  of  paying  dividends,  the  stock  of  the  as- 
sociation is  being  steadily  increased.  Its  members  work  seven 
hours  a  week  less  than  the  usual  time. 


MINNEAPOLIS   COOPERS.  99 

In  November,  1884,  over  a  thousand  hatters  in  South  Nor- 
walk  went  out  on  a  strike,  because  of  a  large  reduction  in 
wages,  after  having  vainly  tried  to  secure  arbitration.     They 
soon  resolved  to  turn  defeat  into  victory  by  organizing  a  co- 
operative lat  factory.     They  formed  a  Co-operative  Associa- 
tion, put  in  $5,000  in  $100  shares,   from  their   own  savings, 
hired  a  vscant  factory  and  set  to  work.     In  a  few  weeks  their 
factory  wa:.  burned  to  the  ground.     Undismayed,  they  bor- 
rowed $5,°°5  and  ran  up  a  wooden  factory  and  were  soon  at 
work  again.     \  second  association  was  soon  formed,  and  then 
a  third,  and  ye  a  fourth  was  lately  reported  as  being  in  course 
of  organization.    These  Associations  employ  each,  on  an  aver- 
age, about  75  hjnds.     It  is  significant  to  note  that,  as  one  of 
the  associates  remarked,  the  women  were  ' '  the  best  men  in  the 
lot."     A  letter  fron  the  president  of  the  original  society,  under 
date  of  Nov.    24,1885,  says:  "We  do  not  divide  the  profits, 
except  to  those  wb  own  shares,  which  are  $100  each  ;  each 
man  having  one  voe,  no  matter  how  many  shares  he  may  own." 
This  latter  feature  iarks  the  society  as  a  genuine  co-operative 
association — the    d^tinctive   character    of   which,    as   distin- 
guished from  a  join-stock  company  is,  that  men  vote  instead 
of  shares  voting.      A  'oint-stock  company  gives  a  shareholder 
as  many  votes  as  the  -.hares  which  he  holds,  whereas  the  co- 
operative association  gies  each  man  only  one  vote — thus  pre- 
serving the   democraticcharacter  of  the   organization.     The 
president  continues  :  "  1  ere  are  about  60  shareholders.     The 
capital,  paid  up,  is  $7,40t    We  have  built  a  very  nice  factory 
and  it  is  fully  equipped.    Ve  have  a  mortgage  on  the  building 
of  $5,000,  at  6  per  cent.     'he  first  year  we  did  not  expect  to 
make  any  profit,  nor  haveve  ;  the  general  dulness  of  trade 
and  the  time  required  to  buil  a  reputation  for  our  goods  being 
against  our  making  money.   Ve  have  succeeded  in  building  a 


100  MINNEAPOLIS  COOPERS. 

reputation  for  our  products,  and  that  is  some  thing,  when  you 
are  aware  of  the  competition  in  our  line  of  manufactures.  We 
employ  about  100  men  and  women  in  the  busy  season." 

Altogether  the  most  striking  later  effort  in  productive  co- 
operation is  that  of  the  barrel-makers  of  Minneapolis.  The 
Christian  Union  gives  the  following  account  of  the  eiperiment : 

The  first  Co-operative  Barrel  Association,  of  Minneapolis,  va»  organized 
in  the  fall  of  1874,  with  a  capital  stock  of  $15,000,  each  member  paying  in 
$15,  and  a  weekly  assessment  of  $5.  The  success  of  this  organization  was 
such  that  it  was  followed  in  1877  by  a  second,  and  in  i88>  by  a  third,  and 
in  1881  by  a  fourth  and  fifth,  and  subsequently  by  two  pore — all  of  which 
are  doing  well.  Every  stockholder  has  but  one  vote,  hcwever  many  shares 
of  stock  he  may  possess  ;  a  condition  which  tends  to  pevent  consolidation 
of  the  stock  in  a  few  hands.  These  co-operative  organizations  possess  a 
good  property,  are  very  thrifty  and  successful,  with  a  apital  stock  ranging 
in  each  case  from  $15,000  to  $70,000.  They  are  all  oing  a  good  business. 
What  is  more  important,  the  coopers,  who  before  tls  co-operative  move- 
ment had  a  poor  reputation  for  sobriety  and  law  andorder,  now  stand  high 
in  the  estimation  of  the  community  as  good  citizfls.  The  effect  of  co- 
operation in  decreasing  intemperance  is  especial/  marked.  The  first 
association,  the  old  "  Co-operative,"  has  its  own  i&nufactory  of  stock,  in 
Chippewa  County,  Wisconsin,  employing  there  Capital  of  $30,000,  with 
prudence  and  success.  The  seven  co-operative  c/npanies  are  doing  busi- 
ness to  the  amount  of  one  million  dollars  yearly, 

The  Minneapolis  Mirror  states  thz  the  second  company, 
"The  North  Star,"  increased  its  capit>  stock  to  $100,000,  and 
does  a  business  of  $250,000  per  annm-  A  letter  from  Min- 
neapolis to  the  Christian  Union  addfthese  particulars  : 

These  societies  supply  all  of  our  mills,  /cept  three,  and  are  doing  fully 
four  fifths  of  all  the  coopering  work  of  /is  flour  city.  They  claim  "six 
sevenths  "  of  all  the  work  done.  The  "f&"  shops  have  disappeared,  one 
by  one,  until  there  is  but  one  left,  and  ty  owner  of  that  has  tried  several 
times  to  sell  out  to  his  workmen.  He  ^its  that  he  cannot  compete  with 
the  co-operative  shops,  and  therefore  deflnds  low  wages.  The  great  mills 


INDUSTRIAL   PARTNERSHIP.  IOI 

favor  the  co-operative  shops,  because  they  are  sure  of  the  best  work  and 
they  are  never  disappointed  by  them.  .  .  .  They  consult  dispassion- 
ately, vote  fairly,  submit  without  hesitation,  work  faithfully,  choose  their 
best  men  always,  obey  implicitly,  and  have  unlimited  faith  in  the  co-opera- 
tive effort.  During  their  existence  the  eight  shops  have  had  not  less  than 
a  score  of  officers  entitled  to  handle  their  money.  Out  of  this  number  not 
one  has  given  any  security,  not  one  has  proved  careless  or  dishonest,  and 
not  one  dollar  of  deficit  or  defalcation  has  been  charged  against  them. 
After  their  eight  years'  experience  it  is  now  admitted  they  are  unassailable 
and  unconquerable  while  united,  and  this  fall  will  probably  see  every 
"  boss'  "  cooper  extinct.  .  .  .  We  are  now  taking  stock  to  buy  a  town- 
ship of  land  of  the  State  ;  I  hope  to  be  one  of  a  company  that  will  form  a 
co-operative  village  on  it  this  fall.  This,  in  my  opinion,  will  be  the  very 
table-land  of  co-operative  effort  and  of  society. 

Within  a  few  weeks,  the  papers  have  given  hints  of  the 
formation  of  a  great  association  that  is  being  formed  among  the 
iron- workers  of  Pittsburg,  under  the  leadership  of  Mr.  John 
Jarret  and  with  the  backing  of  Mr.  Andrew  Carnegie,  which, 
if  one  half  that  is  said  of  it  proves  true,  will  be  the  most  im- 
portant experiment  yet  made  in  our  country  in  co-operative 
production. 

There  have  been  a  number  of  experiments  in  industrial 
partnership  ;  notably  the  Pacific  Mills  of  Lawrence,  Massa- 
chusetts, and  the  Millville  glass-works,  New  Jersey.  One  of 
the  later  attempts  is  that  of  the  Peacedale  Manufacturing 
Company,  Rhode  Island.  At  the  beginning  of  1878,  the 
Messrs.  Hazard  laid  before  their  employees  a  scheme  whereby, 
in  addition  to  the  regular  wages,  the  hands  should  receive  a 
pro-rata  share  in  the  profits  accruing  after  interest  and  profit 
on  capital  had  been  provided.  The  firm  were  to  fix  this  per- 
centage. The  plan  has  been  working  with  partial  success. 
The  first  year  there  were  no  dividends  to  the  hands.  The 
second  year  a  dividend  of  5  per  cent,  on  the  gross  wages  was 
declared,  amounting  to  $5,842.40.  The  third  year  a  dividend 


102  INDUSTRIAL  PARTNERSHIP. 

of  5  per  cent,  was  made,  aggregating  $5,999.65.  The  fourth 
year  (1881)  the  high  price  of  wool  cut  down  profits,  and  a 
dividend  of  3  per  cent.,  or  $3,760.14  was  ordered.  The  co- 
operative plan  continues  in  use,  since  the  firm  can  report  : 
"  We  believe  we  can  see  an  increase  of  care  and  diligence. 
As  yet  this  increase  is  not  as  great  as  it  should  be  ;  but  the 
object  to  be  attained  in  preventing  waste  and  in  encouraging 
conscientious  work  is  so  important  to  the  moral  as  well  as  to 
the  material  good  of  the  community,  that  we  decide  to  perse- 
vere." In  a  letter,  Mr.  Rowland  Hazard  writes  :  "  Results 
are  not  brilliant,  but  I  think  its  good  effects  are  somewhat 
analogous  to  those  of  a  lightning-rod.  .  .  .  If  by  careful 
observations  we  can  see  that  it  reduces  the  tendency  to  violent 
explosions,  we  should  be  satisfied." 

The  Boston  Advertiser  states  that  Mr.  Asa  Cushman,  a  promi- 
nent shoe  manufacturer  of  Auburn,  Me.,  lately  delivered  an 
address  to  his  employees,  in  which  he  presented  a  plan  of 
profit-sharing  with  his  workmen. 

Mr.  Cushman's  plan  for  profit-sharing  proposes  no  change  in  the  rate 
or  method  of  paying  wages,  and  the  conduct  of  the  business  is  to  be  entirely 
in  the  hands  of  the  firm.  At  the  end  of  the  business  year,  however,  after 
a  fair  amount  is  allowed  for  interest  on  the  capital  invested,  for  superintend- 
ence, risks,  depreciation,  insurance,  and  other  contingencies,  the  firm 
propose  to  divide  any  profit  that  shall  remain  in  proportion  to  the  amount 
earned  by  each  employe  during  the  year.  Three  of  the  employes  are  to  be 
selected,  who  are  to  be  given  a  thorough  knowledge  of  its  affairs,  with  the 
understanding  that  they  are  not  to  disclose  the  secrets  of  the  business.  The 
stipulation  is  also  made  that  these  representatives  of  the  employes  shall  be 
citizens  of  Auburn,  and  two,  at  least,  real  estate  owners  there.  The  em- 
ployes are  not  asked  to  invest  any  money,  to  take  any  risks,  or  to  make  any 
guaranties  whatever.  Mr.  Cughman  further  proposes  that  if,  after  one 
year's  trial,  this  system  shall  prove  unsatisfactory  to  all  concerned,  the  or- 
ganization of  the  firm  will  then  be  changed  into  a  corporation  represented 
by  shares,  which  the  employes  may  buy  up  if  they  so  desire.  He  does  not 


INDUSTRIAL  PARTNERSHIP.  103 

claim  that  the  proposed  system  of  co-operation  is  a  philanthropic  or  be- 
nevolent project,  but  simply  a  business  proposition,  made  up  on  what  he 
considers  business  principles,  for  the  benefit  of  all  concerned. 

Few  New  Yorkers,  probably,  have  known  of  the  quietly 
satisfactory  trial  that  has  been  made  of  this  system  in  one  of 
the  leading  newspaper  offices  of  their  own  city.  For  six  years 
past  the  employees  of  the  Staats  Zeitung,  numbering  175  per- 
sons, have  received  a  share  in  the  profits  of  the  paper.  Every 
one  engaged  in  the  establishment,  from  the  chief  officer  to  the 
office-boy,  participates  in  this  profit-sharing.  The  last  dividend 
paid  each  employee  ten  per  cent,  on  his  year's  salary  or  wages. 

A  valuable  paper,  in  a  late  Massachusetts  Bureau  of  Labor, 
gives  an  interesting  account  of  a  few  of  the  most  striking  of 
these  experiments,  from  which  a  couple  of  quotations  are  here 
given  : 

An  industrial  partnership  which  gave  to  employees  an  important  share  in 
framing  the  regulations  and  controlling  the  conditions  under  which  they 
worked,  as  well  as  participation  in  profits,  was  formed  at  the  close  of  the 
year  1869  by  Brewster  &  Co.,  carriage  builders,  at  New  York,  and  dis- 
solved in  June,  1872,  by  the  workingmen  joining  the  eight-hour  strike. 
The  dividend  to  labor  was  10  per  cent,  of  the  firm's  gross  profits,  there  be- 
ing no  deduction  first  of  any  salary  or  interest  on  capital  for  any  member  of 
the  firm.  It  was  divided  in  proportion  to  wages,  every  employee  receiving 
a  share,  unless  he  voluntarily  left  the  establishment  before  the  close  of  the 
year.  .  .  .  That  this  plan  of  participation  might  have  the  full  benefit 
of  the  judgment  and  skill  of  every  person  interested  in  its  success,  and  that 
all  might  share  in  the  responsibilities  of  management,  the  employees  were 
organized  under  an  industrial  asssociation.  When  the  men  struck  they  for- 
feited a  dividend  of  §n,coo,  which  would  have  been  due  a  month  later,  be- 
sides losing  $8,000  in  wages,  and  at  the  end  of  two  weeks  went  back 
to  work  on  the  old  plan  of  simple  wages  without  a  single  concession  on  the 
part  of  Brewster  &  Co 

The  most  extensive  example  of  profit-sharing  in  the  United  States  is  tha^ 
of  the  Pillsbury  Flour  Mills,  at  Minneapolis.  With  a  daily  capacity  of 
9,500  barrels  of  flour  in  their  three  mills,  with  an  output  of  flour  of  $10,- 


IO4  INDUSTRIAL  PARTNERSHIP. 

000,000  a  year,  and  with  an  elevator  business  of  $8,000,000  more,  it  is  the 
largest  industry  of  the  kind  in  the  world.  .  .  .  After  paying  the  run- 
ning expenses  of  all  kinds  and  a  moderate  interest  on  the  capital  invested, 
which  is  $2,500,000,  together  with  large  sums  occasionally  borrowed,  a  cer- 
tain per  cent,  of  the  net  surplus,  the  sxact  per  cent,  not  being  revealed,  is 
divided  among  two  classes  of  employees  :  first,  those  who  have  been  em- 
ployed five  years,  without  regard  to  position  ;  and  second,  those  occupying 
positions  of  especial  importance,  without  regard  to  time  employed.  The 
wages  of  the  first-class  were  thereby  advanced  the  past  year  about  fifty  per 
cent.,  and  of  the  second  class  about  sixty-five  per  cent.  The  plan  went 
into  operation  three  years  ago.  Two  years  ago  $25,000,  one  year  ago  $20,- 
ooo,  and  during  the  year  ending  September  24,  1885,  $35,000  were  thus  di- 
vided among  one  hundred  of  the  eleven  hundred  men  at  work  in  the  mills. 
.  .  .  The  company  consider  that  their  plan  of  profit-sharing  has  greatly 
increased  their  own  profits  by  the  voluntary  services  of  their  men  in  times 
of  need,  by  their  interest  in  the  business,  and  in  other  ways.  The  evident 
good-will  of  the  employees  is  regarded  as  the  most  agreeable  result.  A 
leading  member  of  the  firm  expresses  himself  very  emphatically  relative 
to  the  financial  and  moral  benefits  of  the  arrangement,  and  regards  it  as 
one  that  will  not  be  willingly  relinquished.* 

There  has  been  a  very  marked  and  gratifying  development 
of  efforts  in  the  direction  of  industrial  partnerships  within  the 
past  year,  as  the  daily  papers  indicate  in  their  frequent  notices 
of  new  experiments. 

II.  CO-OPERATIVE  CREDIT. 

(i)  Co-operative  Banking. — Of  banks  proper  there  appear  to 
have  been  few.  The  Grangers,  in  their  palmy  days,  estab- 
lished a  number  of  co-operative  banks  in  different  States, 
some  of  which  were,  from  time  to  time,  reported  to  be  doing  a 
large  business.  Five  (5)  banks  were  reported  by  the  Econo- 
mist (Nov.  8,  1876),  one  of  which  had  a  capital  of  $500,000. 
The  Bank  Commissioner  ( of  California  (1882)  reported  the 
Grangers'  Bank  of  California,  in  San  Francisco  (incorporated 

*  Seventeenth  Annual  Report  of  the  Massachusetts  Bureau  of  Statistics 
of  Labor  :  "  Profit-Sharing." 


CO-OPERATIVE    CREDIT.  1 05 

April  24,  1874),  as  having  a  capital  stock  subscribed  of  $1,000,- 
ooo,  of  which  $531,200  are  paid  in,  in  10,000  shares,  with  total 
resources  of  $1,917,577.06,  covering  all  its  liabilities.  This 
showing  places  it  seventh  in  the  list  of  California  banks,  as  to 
capital,  etc. 

The  Farmers'  Co-operative  Trust  Company  of  Cochranton, 
Crawford  County,  Pennsylvania,  is  perhaps  the  latest  experi- 
ment in  this  line.  It  divides  its  profits  into  three  equal  shares, 
one  third  going  to  the  stockholders,  one  third  to  the  depositors 
of  money,  and  one  third  to  the  borrowers,  pro  rata  to  the  stock 
held,  the  deposits  made,  or  the  loans  drawn. 

(2)  Loan  and  Building  Associations. — Co-operative  banking 
with  us  has  taken  the  form  of  associations  for  the  mutual  loan- 
ing and  borrowing  of  savings,  and  this  chiefly  with  reference 
to  the  building  of  homes.  These  associations  seem  to  have 
originated  in  Philadelphia.  The  earliest  traced  was  the  Ox- 
ford Provident  Building  Association  (Jan.  3,  1831).  The 
earlier  societies  appear  to  have  gone  out  of  existence,  or  to 
have  merged  in  newer  organizations.  All  the  associations  re- 
porting to  the  State  in  1880  date  since  1866.  The  earliest 
experiments  in  this  line  of  which  we  have  accurate  data  were 
in  Massachusetts.  In  1852,  The  Suffolk  Mutual  Loan  and  Ac- 
cumulating Fund  Association  of  Boston  was  organized.  It 
was  followed  by  nine  similar  societies  in  1853,  and  by  sixteen 
in  1854,  when  an  act  of  the  Legislature  was  obtained  to  facili- 
tate the  incorporation  of  such  associations.  In  1857  these 
societies  had  become  of  sufficient  promise  to  call  for  special 
reports  from  the  State  Insurance  Commissioners.  The  report 
for  1859  showed  thirty-six  associations  in  existence,  which  had 
made  an  aggregate  of  loans,  since  their  commencement,  of 
$3,113,808.16  ;  of  which  interest  was  charged  on  $1,344,407.22. 
These  societies  were  run  at  an  average  expense  of  $524.39  per 


106  LOAN  AND  BUILDING  ASSOCIATIONS. 

annum.  Their  term  of  prosperity  was  brief.  The  report  of 
1864  gave  twenty-two  as  then  working  ;  that  of  '65  recorded 
eight  ;  and  that  of  '66  could  only  show  three.  The 
trouble  seems  to  have  lain  in  certain  serious  defects  of  their 
organization,  developed  by  the  strain  of  the  civil  war.  To 
this  latter  cause,  indeed,  is  probably  due  the  obliteration  of  a 
large  portion  of  the  societies  of  different  kinds  which  were  in 
existence  at  its  opening.  The  experiments,  however,  were  not 
thrown  away,  since,  in  the  language  of  the  commissioners, 
"  they  have  demonstrated  beyond  doubt  that,  with  equal  pru- 
dence and  intelligence  on  the  part  of  the  lender,  loans  to  the 
industrious  and  economical  poor  are  as  safe  as  those  made  to 
any  class  whatever  of  the  rich."  After  the  civil  war,  a  re- 
markable revival  of  these  societies  began  in  Philadelphia,  and 
extended  through  Pennsylvania.  The  earliest  organizations  re- 
corded in  the  State  archives  were  The  Milestown,  No.  5  (March, 
1866),  and  The  Bristol,  of  Bucks  Co.  (Dec.,  1866).  These 
were  followed  in  1867  by  The  Falls  of  Schuylkill,  of  Philadel- 
phia, in  January  ;  The  German,  of  Lycoming  Co.,  in  April  ; 
The  Tremont  Saving  Fund  Association,  of  Schuylkill  Co.,  in 
June.  Five  societies  followed  in  1868,  and  four  in  1869. 
These  associations  are  still  in  operation.  The  growth  of  these 
societies  through  the  decade  1870-80  was  astonishing.  They 
now  number  about  600  in  Philadelphia  alone,  with  a  member- 
ship of  75,000,  and  a  capital  of  $80,000,000.  In  the  State  of 
Pennsylvania  there  are  registered  (1880)  1,017  associations. 
The  total  number  in  the  State  is  variously  estimated  from  1,500 
to  1,800.  From  the  data  gathered,  it  can  be  said  that  they 
represent  capital  ranging  firom  $10,000  to  $300,000,  and  net 
earnings  (1880)  reaching  from  $20  (The  Third  Ward  of  Alle- 
ghany  Co.,  organized  Sept.,  1880)  to  $106,885.60  (The  En- 
terprise Saving  Fund  and  Loan  Association,  of  Phila.).  Ten 


LOAN  AND  BUILDING  ASSOCIATIONS.  IO/ 

report  earnings  (1880)  under  $1,000  ;  twenty-seven  from  $1,000 
to  $5,000  ;  eleven  from  $5,000  to  $10,000  ;  forty-three  from 
$10,000  to  $25,000  ;  twenty-three  from  $25,000  to  $50,000  ; 
five  from  $50,000  to  $75,000  ;  one  over  $75,000  ;  and  one  over 
$100,000.  It  can  be  justly  claimed,  officially,  that  they  have 
"  become  an  important  factor  in  the  financial  and  industrial 
progress  of  the  commonwealth."  For  the  same  official  source 
adds  : 

From  their  inception  up  to  the  present  it  is  estimated  that  under  their 
operations  60,000  comfortable  houses  have  been  erected  in  Philadelphia 
alone,  and  that  they  have  enabled  25,000  householders  to  pay  off  mortgages 
that  probably  would  otherwise  have  been  foreclosed.  Through  the  eco- 
nomical habits  they  were  instrumental  in  forming,  it  is  estimated  that 
$100,000,000  have  been  invested  within  the  city  limits,  which,  were  it  not 
for  them,  might  possibly  have  been  squandered  in  dissipation  and  by  im- 
providence. They  have  been  the  means  of  making  80,000  owners  of  real 
estate  and  80,000  tax-payers,  thus  giving  Philadelphia  the  pre-eminent  title 
of  being  the  "  city  of  homes."  f 

A  very  gratifying  feature  of  these  associations  has  been  the 
fidelity  with  which  they  have  been  managed.  "  Hundreds  of 
associations  have  been  conducted  from  their  inception  to  their 
termination  without  the  loss  of  a  dollar  "  *  The  movement 
has  now  its  organ  in  Philadelphia — The  Building  Association 
Journal. 

Ohio  followed  Pennsylvania  closely  in  this  development. 
In  Clark  County,  several  such  associations  were  formed  soon 
after  the  war.  The  Clark  County  Mutual  Benefit  Association 
(1868)  ran  six  years,  with  fair  success.  The  Springfield  Loan 
and  Savings  Association  (1869)  continued  until  1875,  with 
moderate  success.  Other  societies  followed,  all  of  which  were 

*  Report  of  Secretary  of  Internal  Affairs,  Pa.,  1879-80;  pp.  266,  269. 

f  Ib.  p.  268. 


108  LOAN  AND  BUILDING  ASSOCIATIONS. 

patterned  upon  the  Philadelphia  plan.  A  considerable  de- 
velopment of  these  societies  has  taken  place  latterly  in  Ohio, 
especially  in  Cincinnati.  It  is  claimed  that  there  are  174  as- 
sociations in  Cincinnati,  with  a  membership  of  28,000.  The 
Golden  Rule  Aid  Company  of  Clark  Co.  (org.  1880)  claims 
that,  within  three  years,  societies  of  this  pattern  have  been  or- 
ganized in  fifteen  counties  of  the  State,  which  have  paid  in  full 
for  homes  for  their  patrons  to  the  amount  of  $91,700,  and  have 
placed  loan  shareholders  in  possession  of  homes,  paid  for  in 
full  and  on  which  they  are  now  making  monthly  payments,  to 
the  amount  of  $168,750,  and  have  a  subscription  for  loan  shares 
amounting  to  over  $607,000.  The  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics 
(iSSo)  records  the  incorporation  of  307  associations  during  the 
seven  years  preceding  this  report,  with  a  capital  of  $154,658,716. 
"  Numbers  of  these  however  never  commenced  business." 
Thirteen  societies  returned  receipts  and  disbursements  for  the 
preceding  year  amounting  to  $316,775,65,  and  assets,  in  n 
societies,  aggregating  $624,755.54.  A  gain  of  over  38  per  cent 
on  each  share  was  reported. 

Under  the  guidance  of  Hon.  Josiah  Quincy,  Massachu- 
setts has  revived  her  early  efforts  in  this  direction,  following 
now  the  Philadelphia  plan.  Four  building  associations 
were  reported  to  the  State  in  1875.  An  act  of  the  Legis- 
lature to  further  the  formation  of  such  societies  was  ob- 
tained, and  in  July,  1877,  The  Pioneer  Co-operative 
Saving  Fund  and  Loan  Association  was  incorporated,  with 
177  members,  representing  795  shares.  Its  fifth  annual  state- 
ment (April  3,  1882)  shows  819  members,  4,178  shares  of 
stock,  a  cash  business  of  $90,000,  assets  of  $112,528.98,  with 
profits  of  $12,763.98.  Other  associations  arose.  There  are 
now  twenty-two  societies  incorporated,  having  a  total  member- 
ship of  over  6,000,  representing  40,000  shares,  with  an  ultimate 


LOAN  AND  BUILDING  ASSOCIATIONS.  1 09 

value  of  $8,000,000.  "  The  assets  of  the  associations  have 
risen  during  the  year  from  $372,461.31  to  $653,142.80,  which 
indicates  a  marked  degree  of  prosperity."  * 

New  Jersey  reported  129  associations  in  1884.  Of  these,  122 
returned  statistics.  These  societies  have  been  in  existence 
from  one  to  fourteen  years.  They  report  an  aggregate  of  133,- 
300  shares,  held  among  25,000  persons.  Net  assets  were 
given  at  $6,956,351.  Mr.  Bishop  estimates  "that  at  least 
4,000  workmen  in  New  Jersey  are,  at  present,  engaged  in  pay- 
ing off  mortgages  on  their  homes,"  as  borrowers  in  these  as- 
sociations. California  returns  16  societies,  of  which  n  report- 
ing show  29,947  shares,  a  paid-in  capital  of  $1,808,304.98, 
earnings  of  $787,183.62,  and  assets  of  $2,595,488.48.  Similar 
associations  are  known  to  be  in  operation  in  Maine  (one  re- 
ported by  the  Bank  Examiner),  New  Hampshire,  Rhode 
Island,  Delaware,  District  of  Columbia,  Virginia,  West  Vir- 
ginia, Kentucky,  Illinois  (ten  or  twelve  in  Chicago),  and 
Michigan.  The  Bureau  of  Statistics  of  Labor  and  Industries 
of  New  Jersey  (1880)  makes  the  following  conjectural  esti- 
mate of  the  development  of  these  societies  : 

We  have  said  that  there  are  probably  2,000  building  and  loan  associations 
in  the  State  of  Pennsylvania.  If  there  are  1,000  in  all  the  other  States, 
which  is  less  than  others  have  estimated  it,  the  total  would  be  about  3,000 
in  the  country.  It  is  safe  to  say  that  the  average  membership  would  be 
150,  and  the  total,  450,000.  Applying  the  average  of  five  persons  inter- 
ested in  each,  as  in  the  case  of  the  savings-banks,  and  we  have  a  total  of 
2,250,000. 

A  private  authority  on  the  subject  writes  that  it  is  a  safe 
estimate  to  figure  the  average  capital  of  these  associations 
at  $25,000.  This  would  aggregate  a  capital  of  $75,000,000. 

Building  and  loan  associations,  in  the  language  of  the  Penn- 
*  Bank  Commissioner's  Report,  Jan.,  1882. 


110  LOAN  AND  BUILDING  ASSOCIATIONS. 

sylvania  Report  quoted  above,  "  supply  a  want  that  no  other 
savings  institution  or  banking  company  can  meet."  Their  de- 
velopment, one  of  the  most  marked  successes  of  co-operation, 
is  an  encouraging  sign  of  the  education  of  Labor,  in  that  co- 
work  for  a  commonwealth  which  is  the  ideal  towards  which 
society  is  moving — 

Till  each  man  finds  his  own  in  all  men's  good, 
And  all  men  work  in  noble  brotherhood. 


III. 


THE  STORY  OF  CO-OPERATIVE  DISTRIBUTION 
IN  THE  UNITED  STATES. 


OUTLINE. 

1.  Earliest  ^xperiment — Workingmen's  Protective  Union. 

2.  Renewed  interest  in  1860-70 — Most  stores  failures — A  few  permanent 
successes — First  Worcester  Co-operative  Grocery  and  Provision  Store — Fall 
River  Workingmen's  Co-operative  Association. 

3.  Developments  from  1870  to  1 880 — Patrons  of  Husbandry  developed 
co-operation  largely — Sovereigns  of  Industry  also  Developed  co-operation 
— Stores  disconnected  with   either   order — New   York    experiments — New 
Jersey    experiments — Pennsylvania    experiments — Philadelphia    Industrial 
Co-operative  Society. 

4.  Special  phases  of  co-operative  distribution — Dividing  stores — Women's 
store. 

5.  Renewed  activity  in  present  decade — Pittsburg  scheme — Revival  of 
Patrons  of  Husbandry — Knights  of  Labor — American  Co-operative  Union 
— Outlook  of  the  movement. 


THE  STORY  OF  CO-OPERATIVE  DISTRIBUTION  IN 
THE  UNITED  STATES.* 


THE  story  of  Co-operative  Distribution  in  the  United  States 
opens  in  the  decade  1830-40.  The  New  England  Association 
of  Farmers  and  Mechanics,  which  held  its  first  convention  in 
February,  1831,  was  apparently  the  earliest  organization  to 
introduce  and  discuss  resolutions  upon  this  subject.  The  topic 
was  agitated  in  different  labor  organizations  in  that  decade, 
and  some  stores  were  started.  These  early  experiments  soon 
disappeared,  leaving  no  accessible  records  behind  them. 

In  October,  1845,  a  dozen  persons  opened  a  store  in  an  upper 
chamber  over  the  Boylston  Market,  Boston.  Its  first  purchase 
was  a  box  of  soap  and  a  half  chest  of  tea.  Out  of  this  little 
germ  grew  an  enterprise  that,  in  its  best  days,  carried  on  a  trade 
of  from  $r, 000,000  to  $2,000,000  per  annum.  The  store  was 
started  by  members  of  The  Workingmen's  Protective  Union. . 
The  local  divisions  formed  branches  of  a  central  supply 
agency.  The  trade  of  the  association  was  reported  as  follows: 
1848,  $112,507.79  ;  1849,  $220,801.60  ;  1850,  $535,338.56.  In 
1849  its  name  was  changed  to  The  New  England  Protective 
Union.  An  analysis  of  the  returns  to  the  central  division  for 
the  year  ending  December  31,  1850,  shows  the  number  of 
divisions  to  have  been  106  ;  83  of  which  returned  a  member- 
ship of  5,109,  while  84  returned  a  capital  of  $71,890.36.  The 
*  The  North  American  Review,  October,  1882. 
"3 


114  AMERICAN  PROTECTIVE    UNION. 

highest  amount  held  by  any  one  division  was  $2,765.51,  and 
the  lowest  was  $150  ;  the  average  thus  being  $855.63.  For  the 
succeeding  quarter,  67  divisions  reported  having  purchased 
through  the  central  agency  to  the  extent  of  $102,341.04  ;  an 
average  of  $1,527.47.  The  largest  trade  made  at  this  time  by 
one  division  was  by  No.  55,  of  New  Bedford,  which  in  1849 
made  a  total  sale  of  $31,278.64.  The  amount  purchased 
through  the  agency  in  nine  months  of  1851  was  $619,633.16. 
By  October,  1851,  the  number  of  divisions  had  grown  to  403  ; 
of  which  167  reported  an  aggregate  capital  of  $241,712.66, 
while  165  divisions  gave  an  aggregate  of  sales  for  the  year  of 
$1,696,825.46. 

Discord  finally  split  the  organization.  The  new  branch  took 
the  name  of  The  American  Protective  Union.  The  old  organi- 
zation showed,  in  1855,  72  divisions  reporting,  with  4,527  mem- 
bers, an  aggregate  business  of  $1,130,719.29.  The  decline  set 
in  during  the  next  year.  The  new  branch  did  a  business,  be- 
tween 1853  and  1858,  ranging  from  $1,000,000  to  $1,536,000 
per  annum.  In  1859,  the  board  of  government  believed  that 
there  were  600  stores  in  operation.  By  this  time  the  decline 
had  begun  in  this  branch  also.  The  aggregate  business  for 
1859  was  only  $930,376.36.  Both  branches  were  soon  practi- 
cally defunct.  The  great  majority  of  the  local  stores  were 
gradually  wound  up,  or  passed  into  ordinary  joint-stock  con- 
cerns, or  into  private  hands.  The  civil  war  put  an  end  to 
most  of  the  few  that  lingered  on  that  far.  A  handful  endured 
even  that  strain,  and  some  live  still,  under  new  names  generally, 
e.g.,  the  stores  in  Worcester,  New  Bedford,  Natick,  etc.  The 
Natick  store  presents  a  fine,  example  of  fidelity  to  true  co- 
operative principles  and  of  continued  prosperity.  It  has  now 
been  in  existence  for  twenty-two  years.  Its  semi-annual  divi- 
dends have  always  been  ready  promptly.  The  capital  stock, 


EARLY  CO-OPERATIVE   STORES.  115 

originally  fixed  at  $2,000,  has  been  raised  to  $6,000.  It  is 
held  now  by  564  members,  in  $10  shares.  Its  report  for  1882 
showed  sales  for  the  year  of  $129,265,  from  which  there  were 
net  profits  of  $2,298  ;  a  return  of  $3.60  on  each  share  of  $10. 
Of  the  experiments  outside  of  Massachusetts,  during  the  period 
before  the  civil  war,  no  reliable  data  are  at  hand. 

Fincher's  Trade  Review  recorded  the  renewed  interest 
that  showed  itself  in  many  quarters,  in  the  opening  of  the  de- 
cade 1860-70.  It  gave  accounts  of  meetings  held  to  agitate  the 
subject,  of  calls  for  information,  for  lectures,  etc.  It  noted, 
between  November,  1863,  and  May,  1866,  the  establishment  of 
thirty-six  stores  in  ten  States.  A  number  of  other  stores  were 
mentioned  as  projected.  The  extent  of  this  movement  we  may 
better  judge  from  the  fact  that  the  "  Review"  noticed  a  con- 
ference of  co-operative  stores  in  Boston,  wherein  a  plan  for  a 
wholesale  store  was  recommended,  and  also  a  contemplated 
conference  of  the  stores  in  New  York  State.  Some  of  these 
stores  started  off  with  great  encouragement.  The  Providence 
store  made  sales  of  $1,200  in  the  first  week,  and  $1,500  in  the 
second  week,  and  the  sales  rose  within  six  months  to  as  high  as 
$600  a  day.  The  Troy  store  sold  to  the  extent  of  $5,000  in 
the  first  two  weeks.  The  Roxbury  and  Charlestown  stores 
even  reported  sales  of  $6,000  each  in  the  first  week.  Cheering 
tidings  of  progress  were  noted,  from  time  to  time,  in  the 
Trade  Review.  The  South  Reading  store  reported,  for  the 
ninth  quarter,  sales  of  $i  1,801.25.  The  Troy  store  made  sales, 
in  its  first  six  months,  of  $36,825.43.  The  Chelsea  store 
claimed  sales,  in  its  first  year,  of  $90,000. 

Alongside  of  these  signs  of  success  appear  brief  records  of 
stores  that  had  failed.  The  Review's  chronicle  closes  in 
May,  1866 — the  paper  then  going  out  of  existence — and  we 
lose  our  only  general  guide  for  this  period. 


Il6  WORCESTER  AND  FALL  RIVER   STORES. 

We  find,  however,  scattered  local  data,  indicating  a  continu- 
ance of  the  movement.  Massachusetts  reported,  officially,  in 
1868,  the  existence  of  twelve  distributive  associations  in  eleven 
towns.  Their  united  capital  amounted  to  $47,000,  and  the 
aggregate  membership  to  1,859.  Other  stores  followed  in  the 
same  State.  Sporadic  developments  of  stores  appear  to  have 
taken  place  through  the  country.  Some  of  them  have  con- 
tinued in  operation  to  the  present  time,  and  have  won  notable 
successes.  The  First  Worcester  Co-operative  Grocery  and 
Provision  Store  was  organized  in  1867.  In  1875  it  reported 
590  members,  and  an  annual  sale  of  $75,000.  In  1881  it  re- 
ported a  paid-up  capital  of  $5,000,  with  reserves  of  $1,113. 
Its  members  for  1884  numbered  500,  and  it  had  a  trade  that 
year  of  $55,000.  It  is  in  a  prosperous  condition.  The  Acush- 
net  Co-operative  Association  was  organized  for  the  sale  of 
groceries  in  1867.  It  reported,  in  1875,  a  membership  of  100, 
a  share-capital  of  $6,900,  in  shares  of  $25,  assets  amounting 
to  $13,622,  an  annual  trade  of  $71,000,  and  a  dividend  of 
about  thirty-two  per  cent,  on  the  members'  capital.  Dur- 
ing the  three  years  ending  with  1874,  the  association 
paid  dividends  amounting  to  240  per  cent,  on  its  share- 
capital. 

The  Fall  River  Workingmen's  Co-operative  Association  was 
organized  in  1866,  as  a  joint-stock  company.  After  about 
three  years'  experience,  it  re-organized  on  the  Rochdale  plan. 
At  the  close  of  its  first  year  it  had  sixty-five  members  and  a 
share-capital  of  $3,600.  By  the  close  of  1874  its  membership 
had  increased*  to  260,  and  the  share-capital  to  $19,734,  while 
its  assets  were  about  $50,000.  During  1874  its  sales  were 
$79,615,  and  its  net  profits  for  the  year  were  $9,155.  In  the 
eight  years  of  its  existence  up  to  1875,  the  store  had  sold 
goods  to  the  value  of  $425,277  ;  had  paid  to  members,  as  inter- 


PATRONS  OF  HUSBANDRY,  117 

est  and  dividends,  $38,179;  and  had  divided  among  purchas- 
ers, not  members,  $4,757.  In  1881  the  association  reported  a 
paid-up  capital  of  $17,381. 

Under  the  pressure  of  the  hard  times,  in  the  next  decade 
(i87o-'8o),  the  Order  of  the  Patrons  of  Husbandry  (founded 
in  1867)  took  on  large  proportions.  In  six  months  of  1873, 
more  than  10,000  granges  were  formed.  The  membership 
doubled  in  1874.  At  the  meeting  of  the  National  Grange,  in 
November,  1875,  the  secretary  reported  24,290  granges,  with  a 
membership  of  763,263.  The  minutes  of  the  National  Grange 
show,  from  the  start,  a  discussion  of  various  schemes  of  co- 
operation, with  references  to  experiments  actually  made.  The 
favorite  method  was  an  imperfect  form  of  co-operation,  in 
which  each  local  grange  resolved  itself  into  a  purchasing  club, 
and  the  various  granges  of  a  State  united  to  support  a  general 
agent,  who,  combining  the  orders  of  the  scattered  clubs, 
bought  in  large  quantities  at  a  considerable  discount,  and 
shipped  by  car-load  to  the  several  granges  at  reduced  rates. 
The  business  of  these  agencies  became  immense.  Pennsyl- 
vania had  an  agency  store  in  Philadelphia  which  was  filled 
from  top  to  bottom  with  samples.  The  Ohio  agency,  in  one 
year  (1875),  ran  a  business  of  a  few  thousand  dollars  up  to 
"  not  far  from  one  million,"  with  a  saving  to  the  granges  of 
$240,725  40. 

The  Economist  of  November  8,  1876,  declared  that  "their 
records  show  twenty  State  purchasing  agencies,  three  of  which 
do  each  an  annual  business  of  $200,000,  and  one  of  which  does 
an  annual  business  of  $1,000,000.  Patrons  have  five  steamboat 
or  packet  lines,  fifty  societies  for  shipping  goods,  thirty-two 
grain  elevators,  twenty-two  warehouses  for  storing  goods." 
Some  of  the  grange  organs  made  huge  claims  as  to  the  savings 
thus  effected.  One  of  their  papers  wrote  :  '*  The  P.  of  H.  saved 


1 1 8  PA  TRONS  OF  HUSBANDR  Y. 

$5,000,000  in  1872  and  $12,000,000  in  1874."  This  system  of 
State  agencies  appears  to  have  assumed  proportions  beyond 
the  business  talent  and  experience  which  the  Order  could 
furnish,  and  great  losses  ensued. 

The  attention  of  the  Order  was  drawn  to  purer  forms  of 
co-operation.  The  subject  of  local  stores  was  discussed  at 
great  length.  The  ninth  session  of  the  National  Grange  (1875) 
presented  a  careful  plan  for  organizing  such  stores,  conforming 
in  essential  particulars  to  the  Rochdale  model.  This  was 
widely  scattered  through  the  Order,  and,  it  is  believed,  was 
generally  followed  in  the  experiments  made.  Unfortunately 
there  are  in  print  no  accurate  accounts  of  the  spread  of  these 
stores,  and  of  their  experiences.  The  Economist,  in  1876, 
declared  :  "  It  is  quite  impossible  to  enumerate  the  grange 
stores,  but  one  hundred  and  sixty  are  recorded."  The  official 
records  of  the  National  Grange  use  only  general  language : 
'  Local  stores  are  in  successful  operation  all  over  the  country  " 
(1879).  "  There  are  large  numbers  of  co-operative  associations 
in  various  sections  of  the  country.  .  .  .  Some  have  suc- 
ceeded beyond  the  most  sanguine  expectations  of  those  inter- 
ested in  them  ;  others  have  failed  "  (1881). 

Educational  influences  were  contemplated  and  secured  in 
these  co-operative  associations.  The  local  granges  met 
statedly,  often  in  their  own  halls,  to  discuss  economic  and 
other  questions.  They  established  circulating  libraries  and 
schools  of  agriculture. 

The  reaction  usual  to  all  rapidly  developing  movements  befell 
this  Order  in  the  latter  part  of  the  decade,  aggravated  by  the 
relaxing  effects  of  returning  national  prosperity.  Of  late,  how- 
ever, there  appears  to  be  a  revival  in  the  Order. 

A  second  great  organization  furthering  co-operation  arose  in 
1874 — the  Sovereigns  of  Industry.  This  was  a  secret  Order, 


SO  VE REIGNS  OF  IND  US  TRY.  II 9 

with  ritual,  etc.,  and  was  open  to  all  classes  except  lawyers.* 
The  preamble  to  the  constitution  of  the  National  Council  stated 
its  object  thus  : 

It  will  try  to  establish  a  better  system  of  econorrtfcal  exchanges,  and  to 
promote,  on  a  basis  of  equity  and  liberty,  mutual  fellowship  and  co-opera- 
tive action  among  the  producers  and  consumers  of  wealth. 

The  growth  of  the  Order  was  rapid.  Within  forty  days 
from  the  organization,  councils  were  formed  in  eighteen 
States.  At  the  first  annual  meeting  of  the  Massachusetts 
Council  (December,  1874)  one  hundred  councils  were  repre- 
sented, with  ten  thousand  members.  The  second  annual 
council  reported  one  hundred  and  sixty-six  councils,  with 
twenty  thousand  members.  In  1877,  the  National  Council  had 
reports  from  councils  in  seventeen  States  and  territories.  At 
first,  the  members  of  a  local  council  used  to  club  together  in 
buying  at  a  certain  store,  saving  thus  from  ten  to  twenty  per 
cent.  They  would  buy  flour  by  the  car-load,  saving  from  two 
to  three  dollars  a  barrel.  A  general  distributing  agency  was 
established  in  Chicago,  through  which  all  local  councils  could 
procure  goods  direct,  at  cost.  The  General  Council  urged 
upon  the  Order  the  establishment  of  co-operative  stores  on  the 
Rochdale  system,  and  clearly  and  accurately  enunciated  the 
principles  and  methods  of  that  system  in  a  plan  which  was 
printed  for  free  distribution.  The  advice  seems  to  have  been 
widely  followed.  The  report  of  the  Committee  on  Methods  of 
Trade  reported  fifty  stores  in  Massachusetts  in  1875.  The 
Sovereigns'  bulletin  of  May,  1875,  mentions  that  "within  the 
past  few  months  a  large  number  of  co-operative  stores  have 
been  started  by  members  of  the  Order  in  many  different  States." 

*  It  is  a  notable  fact  that  both  of  these  orders  were  open  to  women,  and 
that  the  S.  of  I.  made  women  eligible  to  every  position  in  their  ranks,  some 
of  the  councils  electing  women  as  presidents. 


120  SOVEREIGNS  OF  INDUSTRY. 

By  1877  the  number  of  stores  reporting  to  the  Massachusetts 
Council  had  fallen  to  twenty-nine  ;  fifteen  of  which  were  joint- 
stock  companies  and  fourteen  of  which  were  carried  on  upon 
the  Rochdale  plaq^;  with  total  sales  per  month  of  $49,806. 
There  were  eight  stores  not  reporting  to  the  council.  The 
address  of  President  W.  H.  Earle  to  the  National  Council  in 
Syracuse,  March  20,  1877,  said  : 

Ninety-four  (94)  councils,  selected  from  the  whole,  report  a  member- 
ship of  7,273,  and  with  an  average  capital  of  only  $884  did  a  business  last 
year  of  $1,089,372.55.  This  was  equal  to  a  saving  of  $21  to  every  man  and 
woman  belonging  to  these  councils.  It  is  safe  to  assume  that  the  unreported 
sales  will  swell  the  amount  to  at  least  $3,000,000.  which,  at  the  same  ratio 
of  profit  as  above  reported,  would  make  a  saving  of  $420,000. 

The  president's  address  to  the  fourth  annual  council  (1878) 
presented  returns  from  seventy-five  stores.  Forty-five  councils 
reported  an  aggregate  trade  for  the  year  of  $750,000  ;  while 
thirty-five  councils  reported  capital,  in  the  stores  they  repre- 
sented, of  $58,000.  It  was  proposed  at  this  time  to  create  a 
co-operative  exchange,  under  the  title  of  The  New  England 
Sovereigns  of  Industry  Board  of  Trade,  to  promote  direct 
co-operative  trade  or  exchange. 

Ten  of  the  leading  stores,  reporting  to  the  Order,  showed  an 
average  capital  of  $2,630,  with  an  average  trade  of  $34,000. 
"  It  is  worthy  of  note,"  says  the  address,  "  that  all  these  stores 
have  conducted  their  business  upon  the  Rochdale  plan."  The 
address  further  stated  that  "  nearly  the  entire  trade  reported 
has  been  conducted  on  the  Rochdale  plan."  Some  of  these 
stores  have  continued  prospering  to  the  present  time.  The 
Silver  Lake  Co-operative  Association  commenced  business  in 
July,  1875,  with  a  capital  of  only  $460.  In  1877  it  had  a  cap- 
ital of  $1,200,  and  did  a  business  per  annum  of  about  $15,000. 
Its  expenses,  all  told,  were  about  $912  a  year.  This  society, 


LOCAL   STORES.  121 

now  in  its  eleventh  year,  reports  for  the  year  ending  October 
i,  1885,  sales  of  $12,708.33  ;  representing  a  gain  of  $3,218.84 
over  the  trade  of  five  years  before.  On  the  sales  of  the  past 
year  there  was  a  net  profit  of  9  per  cent.  This  association  has 
a  membership  of  forty,  scattered  through  ten  towns.  The  Old 
Colony  Co-operative  Association,  Kingston  village,  opened  its 
store  in  1875,  and  in  1877  was  doing  business  at  the  rate  of 
about  $30,000  per  annum.  It  reported  for  1881  a.  paid-up 
capital  of  $4,680,  with  a  balance  of  profits  of  $419.  The  Sax- 
onville  store  was,  in  1877,  doing  business  to  the  amount  of 
$48,000  per  annum,  on  a  capital  of  $1,700. 

In  1878  the  Order  was  considering  larger  plans,  e.  g.y  a 
wholesale  store,  a  warehouse,  etc.  But,  soon  after  this,  serious 
troubles  were  experienced  in  the  Order,  whose  nature  is  only 
partially  divulged  in  the  reports  of  its  councils  and  the  columns 
of  its  organs.  All  other  sources  of  trouble  were  aggravated  by 
the  relaxing  of  the  pressure  of  hard  times  that  had  forced  men 
into  combination.  The  founder  and  chief  leader  of  the  Order 
seems  to  have  labored  heroically,  in  a  thoroughly  religious 
spirit — but  in  vain.  In  April,  1880,  the  Sovereigns'  Bulletin 
noticed  a  meeting  of  the  Executive  Committee  of  the  Na- 
tional Council,  which  would  "  probably  take  some  final  and 
definite  action  as  to  the  Order."  There  is  no  record  of  the 
funeral. 

In  addition  to  these  organized  movements  to  build  up  co-op- 
erative distribution,  there  have  been,  from  1870  onward, 
numerous  stores  springing  into  being,  from  purely  local  inter- 
est. Massachusetts  reported,  from  the  best  information  to  be 
procured,  in  1875,  fifteen  independent  stores  as  having  been 
organized  since  1870,  with  an  aggregate  capital  of  $29,260  ; 
and  twenty  such  stores  as  then  in  operation,  with  a  capital  of 
$67,351.  This  shows  that  five  stores  had  lived  on  from  the 


122      MASSACHUSETTS  AND  NEW    YORK  STORES. 

preceding  decade,  averaging  a  capital  of  over  $7,500.  There 
were  also  several  societies  mentioned  as  not  reporting  to  the 
State.  Eight  societies,  reporting  officially  to  the  Labor  Bu- 
reau, gave  aggregate  sales  of  $500,000  per  annum. 

The  Plymouth  Rock  Co-operative  Company  reports,  for  the 
year  ending  December  30,  1885,  sales  amounting  to  between 
$45,000  and  $50,000.  The  usual  profits  per  annum  are  about 
$2,000.  The  trade  of  the  store  has  increased  steadily,  having 
been  about  $17,000  in  $1877-78  ;  and  thenceforward  in  suc- 
cessive years,  $17,000,  $25,000,  $33,000,  $39,000,  and  $41,000. 

The  Seventh  Annual  Report  of  the  Riverside  Co-operative 
Association  of  Maynard,  Mass.  (Dec.  31,  1885),  showed  sales 
amounting  to  $16,200.03  5  on  which  a  dividend  of  three  per 
cent,  was  declared. 

In  New  York  State  we  find  both  failures  and  successes  dur- 
ing this  period.  Two  of  the  latter  may  be  noted.  The 
Farmers'  and  Mechanics'  Trading  Company,  Seneca  Falls, 
was  founded  in  1872,  and  reorganized  in  1878.  Its 'Thirteenth 
Annual  Report  (Dec.  31,  1885)  shows  sales  for  the  year  of 
$13,662.05  ;  returning  in  dividends  to  members  $467.94.  It 
is  in  a  very  sound  condition,  having  assets  of  $5,214.35  against 
liabilities  amounting  to  $1,631.15.  Its  sales  during  the  thir- 
teen years  of  its  existence  have  aggregated  $192,515.85,  yield- 
ing net  profits  of  $8,259.87.  It  has  already  paid  in  dividends 
more  than  the  amount  of  capital  invested  in  1872,  and  the  un- 
divided profits  are  now  equal  to  the  sum  of  eighty  per  centum 
in  excess  of  the  capital  still  remaining  invested  in  the  business. 
The  Port  Jervis  Co-operative  Association,  founded  in  1878,  in 
its  thirty-fourth  quarterly  report  (May,  1886),  shows  sales 
during  the  quarter  of  $10,336,  with  net  profits  of  $632.96. 
This  was  divided  as  follows  :  One  and  a  half  per  cent,  on 
members'  capital — $[17.96,  and  five  per  cent,  on  purchases — 


NEW  JERSEY,    OHIO,  AND  PENNSYLVANIA.        123 

$575.00.  The  total  profits  of  the  store  since  it  was  opened 
have  been  $16,802.87.  The  association  was  at  this  time  con- 
sidering propositions  to  buy  a.  central  lot  and  build  a  store 
thereon,  and  to  connect  the  present  store  with  various  points 
in  the  suburbs  by  telephone. 

New  Jersey  had  a  number  of  stores  started  in  this  period, 
details  of  which  the  Labor  Bureau  finds  it  hard  to  get  at.  The 
Raritan  Woollen  Mills  Co-operative  Association,  one  of  the 
most  successful  ventures  in  the  State,  it  is  believed,  was 
organized  with  a  capital  of  $2,810,  and  has  now  a  capital  of 
$9,670.  The  sales  for  the  year  ending  October  8,  1880,  were 
$95,821.39,  and  for  the  six  months  ending  April  8,  1881,  were 
$54,590.45,  or  over  $9,000  per  month.  Ten  per  cent,  has 
been  paid  on  the  capital  stock  andrfrom  five  to  six  per  cent, 
on  the  purchases. 

Ohio  gave  birth  to  a  number  of  experiments  in  this  decade. 
Accounts  are  had  of  eight  stores  in  1877.  Their  sales  ranged 
from  $2,500  to  $66,000  per  annum,  and  their  net  profi'ts  from 
$170  to  $6,300  per  annum. 

In  Pennsylvania  two  examples  of  successful  stores  may  be 
taken  from  the  extreme  sections  of  the  State.  The  Neshannock 
Co-operative  Society,  Neshannock  Falls,  Lawrence  County,  was 
founded  early  in  1873.  Its  fifty-second  quarterly  report  (May 
i,  1886)  shows  sales  for  the  quarter  amounting  to  $3,765.32, 
with  profits  of  $350.16.  This  society  is  composed  of  miners. 
It  has  led  to  several  similar  societies  in  other  mining  districts. 

The  most  brilliant  success  achieved  in  the  country  has  been 
won  by  the  Philadelphia  Industrial  Co-operative  Society 
(limited).  It  was  incorporated  in  1875.  Starting  with  one 
store,  it  has  now  six  stores  :  a  main  store,  a  store  for  boots 
and  shoes,  one  for  meats  and  provisions,  one  for  dry  goods, 
and  two  branch  stores.  Its  first  quarter's  sales  were  about 


124  DIVIDING  STORES— WOMEN'S  STORE. 

$2,600.  Its  sales  for  the  quarter  ending  February  18,  1882, 
were  $51,413.63,  being  an  increase  upon  the  preceding  quarter 
of  over  $n,ooo.  The  gross  profits  for  the  quarter  were 
$4,516.62,  which,  after  paying  the  usual  claims  of  share-capital, 
fixed  stock,  and  legal  reserve,  and  four  per  cent,  on  non- 
members'  purchases,  enabled  the  society  to  pay  a  dividend  on 
members'  purchases  of  nine  per  cent.,  and  still  left  a  small 
balance.  There  are  now  upward  of  a  thousand  members. 

There  have  been  some  curious  phases  of  co-operative  dis- 
tribution. The  dividing  stores  of  Fall  River  bade  fair  at  one 
time  to  create  a  clearly  marked  species.  The  earliest  opened 
was  in  1865,  in  a  wooden  shed  owned  by  a  mill  corporation. 
By  1874  there  were  34  such  stores.  The  number  of  families 
represented  at  this  time  -w^as  1,200.  These  stores  did  not 
cherish  any  of  the  nobler  sentiments  which  animated  the 
Rochdale  weavers,  nor  did  they  embody  the  practical  wisdom 
of  those  sagacious  Yorkshiremen.  They  seem  to  have  sold  as 
near  cost  as  possible,  and  to  have  had  no  educational  fund,  or 
any  other  provision  looking  to  the  improvement  of  the  mem- 
bers. The  saving  effected  was  not  made  plain  to  all  the  mem- 
bers, as  is  done  where  the  usual  prices  are  followed  and  the 
profits  are  set  aside  as  dividends.  So  when,  in  1874,  a  strong 
firm  of  grocers  from  Boston  opened  a  branch  in  Fall  River,  the 
low  rates  of  the  new  establishment  cut  out  most  of  the  dividing 
stores.  There  are  now  seven  of  them  in  existence,  represent- 
ing a  membership  of  about  1,200  persons. 

There  is  in  Philadelphia  a  store  started,  built  up,  and  chiefly 
managed  by  women.  A  small  number  of  women,  five  winters 
ago,  bought  their  groceries  together  at  wholesale — barrels  of 
flour,  chests  of  tea,  bags  of  coffee,  etc. — and  distributed  them 
among  themselves.  They  were  so  well  pleased  with  the  ex- 
periment that  they  formed  a  Working  People's  Co-operative 


PRESENT  MOVEMENTS.  12$ 

Association,  with  shares  at  $2  each.  They  have  opened  a 
store  on  Mondays,  Wednesdays  and  Saturdays,  from  7  to  10 
P.M.,  when  one  of  the  women  is  in  charge.  Shares  have  been 
reduced  to  $i  apiece.  A  small  profit  is  charged  for  rent  and 
other  expenses.  There  was  a  store  in  Springfield,  Ohio,  early 
in  the  decade  1870-80,  whose  membership  was  confined  to 
colored  people. 

A  renewed  activity  in  co-operative  distribution  marks  the 
current  decade.  Stores  are  reported  as  starting  up  in  many 
sections  of  the  country  :  four  in  New  Jersey,  four  in  Pennsyl- 
vania, seven  in  Michigan,  etc.  Even  distant  Montana  is 
stirring  itself.  Some  of  these  new  societies  start  off  vigorously. 
The  Dorchester  store  (organized  1880)  reported  sales  for  1881 
of  $30,000.  The  Lansing  (Mich  )  store  began  in  a  small  way 
with  a  paid-up  capital  of  only  $300,  and  is  now  doing  a  busi- 
ness of  upward  of  $32,000  per  annum.  The  Fifth  Quarterly 
Statement  of  the  Arlington  Co-operative  Association,  Lawrence, 
Mass.,  reports  sales  for  the  quarter  amounting  to  $10,543.00. 
Troy  (N.  Y.)  has  lately  opened  a  store  with  a  fine  spirit  of  de- 
termination on  the  part  of  one  or  two  members — young  men 
who  have  been  several  times  disappointed  already,  but  are  re- 
solved to  make  a  success  of  this  venture,  by  shouldering  the 
chief  labor  of  it.  Another  instance  of  the  same  determined 
spirit — to  which  co-operation  has  always  owed  its  successes — 
is  found  in  Springfield,  Ohio,  where,  after  repeated  failures,  a 
new  store  is  about  to  be  started  through  the  agency  of  a  few 
sturdy  souls.  The  Trenton  Co-operative  Society  reports  for 
the  last  quarter  of  its  first  year  (March  31,  1886),  sales  of 
$8,219,  yielding  a  dividend  on  salaries  and  purchases  of  twelve 
per  cent. 

The  Pittsburg  Dispatch  gives  an  account  of  a  remarkable 
scheme  now  being  shaped  in  that  city  : 


126  GRANGE  REVIVAL. 

The  project  is  co-operation  on  an  unusually  large  scale.  It  is  proposed 
to  establish  distributive,  productive,  and  credit  systems  exclusively  in  the 
interest  of  members  of  organized  labor.  When  the  plans  are  completed, 
which  will  be  in  the  fall,  a  large  general  store  and  a  workingman's  savings- 
bank  will  be  established  in  this  city.  .  .  .  No  one  but  workingmen 
or  members  of  labor  organizations  will  be  permitted  to  take  stock,  and  no 
man  can  hold  more  than  $200  worth.  .  .  .  When  a  sufficient  fund  has 
been  secured  to  start  the  bank  and  store,  they  will  be  established  in  this 
city.  A  central  and  convenient  location  will  be  secured.  Every  thing  that 
is  used  by  a  workingman  and  his  family  will  be  kept  in  the  store.  Prices 
will  be  lower  than  at  other  stores,  but  there  will  be  a  profit  for  the  stock- 
holders, and  dividends  will  be  paid  every  six  months  or  deposited  to  the 
credit  of  the  stockholders  in  the  bank.  A  number  of  delivery  wagons  will 
be  sent  all  over  the  cities  daily  for  the  purpose  of  receiving  and  delivering 
orders.  These  stores  will  be  established  in  all  the  leading  cities  of  the 
country  as  soon  as  possible.  After  this  scheme  has  been  tested,  building 
and  loan  associations  will  be  organized,  the  main  object  being  to  erect 
homes  for  the  members.  In  time  there  will  spring  out  of  this  movement 
co-operative  rolling  mills,  steel  mills,  foundries,  factories,  and  machine 
shops.  Workingmen  will  soon  become  interested  in  the  movement,  and, 
instead  of  spending  money  in  saloons  or  for  pleasure,  will  deposit  all  they 
can  spare  in  their  bank.  With  men  like  Andrew  Carnegie  and  John  Jar- 
rett  behind  the  scheme,  there  is  hardly  any  possibility  of  a  failure. 

As  already  indicated,  the  Patrons  of  Husbandry  seem  to  be 
reviving,  and  in  the  new  impetus  of  this  Order  co-operation  is 
sharing.  The  late  secretary  of  the  National  Grange  writes  : 
"  Hundreds  of  co-operative  stores  upon  the  Rochdale  plan  are 
in  successful  operation  all  over  the  country,  while  a  number  of 
large  wholesale  or  supply  houses  are  running  at  various  cen- 
tres." That  this  is  no  empty  boast  is  evidenced  by  the  official 
reports  from  one  State,  and  that  a  frontier  State.  The  Texas 
Co-operative  Association,  Patrons  of  Husbandry,  in  its  third 
annual  report  (July,  1881),  gives  seventy-five  co-operative 
granges  as  connected  with  it.  The  general  manager  reports 
(May,  1882)  one  hundred  and  three  distributive  associations. 


NEW  ORGANIZATIONS.  I2/ 

He  writes  :  "  Our  growth  has  astonished  all  alike.  We  have 
not  had  a  single  failure  where  the  true  Rochdale  principles 
have  been  adhered  to."  The  secretary  writes  (April,  1882): 
"  The  business  is  a  wonderful  success  thus  far." 

Two  new  labor  organizations  have  come  to  the  front  with  the 
present  decade,  each  of  which  emphasizes  co-operation.  The 
Central  Labor  Union,  a  federative  body  of  the  trade  associa- 
tions of  New  York  City,  in  its  first  semi-annual  report  (July, 
1882),  presents  co-operation  as  one  of  its  chief  aims.  The 
Knights  of  Labor,  the  newest  national  Order,  seeks,  according 
to  the  fourth  plank  in  its  declaration  of  principles,  the  "  estab- 
lishment of  co-operative  institutions,  productive  and  distribu- 
tive." The  claim  which  this  Order  makes  as  to  membership 
warrants  the  hope  that  if  it  seriously  essays  to  embody  this 
principle,  something  substantial  may  result  to  the  cause  of  co- 
operation.* 

This  spring,  committees  representing  the  Michigan  Grange 
and  the  Michigan  Assembly  of  the  Knights  of  Labor  met  in 
Detroit,  and,  as  a  result  of  their  conference,  recommended  to 
their  associations  an  elaborate  plan  of  distributive  co-operation. 
They  proposed  to  establish  distributing  agencies  at  various 
central  points  in  the  State,  where  produce  and  merchandise  of 
all  kinds  should  be  gathered  through  purchasing  agents,  and 
then  distributed  to  the  members  of  both  organizations. 

An  association  has  lately  been  formed  under  the  title  of 
The  American  Co-operative  Union,  with  head-quarters  in 
Zanesville,  Ohio,  which  aims  "  to  unite  in  one  grand  union  all 
societies,  companies,  or  associations,  of  whatever  nature,  whose 
government  is  of  a  representative  nature,  that  are  already  or- 
ganized or  which  may  hereafter  be  organized  by  this  Union,  or 

*  Already  reports  come  in  from  widely  different  sections,  of  stores  that 
are  being  started  under  the  auspices  of  the  Knights  of  Labor. 


128  REVIEW  OF  STORY. 

otherwise,  in  order  to  bring  about  complete  co-operation  through 
the  interwoven  interest  of  all."  This  association  aspires  "to 
solve  the  great  problem  of  the  nineteeth  century,  by  organizing 
the  business  and  industry  of  the  country  upon  co-operative 
principles,  which  will  effectually  put  an  end  to  strikes  and  the 
ruinous  disputes  between  employer  and  employed." 

This  bird's-eye  view  of  the  story  of  co-operative  distribution 
in  the  United  States  shows  a  very  much  larger  development 
than  is  usually  supposed.  Owing  to  the  obscurity  incident  to 
these  humble  enterprises,  their  shrinking  from  public  notice, 
and  the  ephemeral  character  of  many  of  them,  data  are  pecul- 
iarly hard  to  gather ;  so  that  the  probability  is  that  the  real 
extent  of  this  movement  is  very  imperfectly  indicated  in  this 
essay.  Most  of  the  experiments  have  undoubtedly  been  fail- 
ures. The  causes  of  this  non-success  appear  to  have  been 
largely  those  experienced  in  the  Old  World.  Incompetent 
and  dishonest  management,  selfish  and  impatient  members, 
vicious  methods  of  doing  business  recur  with  saddening  itera- 
tion in  the  history  of  these  stores.  Larger  social  forces  have 
made  our  country,  thus  far,  a  hard  field  for  co-operation.  The 
general  prosperity  of  the  nation  has  indisposed  men  to  small 
savings,  and  active  competition  has  cut  prices  in  most  neces- 
saries to  a  figure  that  has  left  little  margin  for  such  stores. 
Mr.  Quincy's  conclusion  confirms  the  general  experience  in 
this  country,  as  in  England,  that  "  stores  on  the  Rochdale  plan 
are  not  adapted  to  large  cities."  Philadelphia's  development 
of  thrift  in  her  wage-earners,  and  the  education  in  association 
won  by  them  in  the  wonderfully  successful  building  and  loan 
associations  of  that  city,  probably  explain  her  exceptional  ex- 
perience. It  is,  however,  an  exaggeration  of  the  ill-success  of 
this  movement  to  say,  with  Mr.  Barnard,  in  "  Co-operation  as 
a  Business,"  that  "  in  this  country  distributive  co-operation 


FUTURE   OF  CO-OPERATION.  1 29 

has  been  marked  by  almost  utter  failure."  Enough  has  been 
indicated  of  real  success  to  make  it  seem  probable  that  before 
long,  with  the  rapid  oncoming  of  new  and  harder  conditions 
for  the  workingmen  of  this  country,  Mr.  Colly er's  jesting  as- 
surance to  George  Jacob  Holyoake,  at  the  reception  tendered 
him  on  his  latest  visit  to  our  country,  may  turn  out  literally 
true  :  "  We  have  been  altogether  too  comfortable  hitherto  to 
do  much  in  co-operation,  but  by  and  by  we  will  show  you  the 
biggest  thing  out  in  this  line." 


IV. 
IS  THE  STATE  JUST  TO  THE  WORKINGMAN? 


OUTLINE. 

1.  Labor's  right  to  the  land  and  the  State's  attitude  thereto. 

2.  Labor's  right  to  a  fair  chance  in  the  struggle  for  existence,  and  the 
State's  failure  to  secure  this  right — (i)  Oppressive  taxation — National  debts 
— State  and  municipal  debts — (2)  Partial   legislation — (3)  Artificial  mon- 
opolies. 

3.  Labor's  right  to  a  just  share  in  the  wealth  that  it  produces,  and  the 
State's  failure  to  interfere  impartially  in  the  natural  adjustment  of  profits 
and  wages — (i)  Conspiracy  laws — (2)  Importation  of  cheap  foreign  labor 
under  contract — (3)  Machinery  in  the  hands  of  Capital — Mechanism  revo- 
lutionizing industry  and  trade — Factory  system — The  State  has  failed  to 
guard  the  interests  of  labor  thus  jeopardized — Patents — The  non-interference 
of  the  State  an  injustice. 

4.  Summary — Labor  must  appeal  to  the  tribunal  of  Justice — The  Church 
must  carry  this  appeal. 


IS    THE    STATE   JUST   TO   THE   WORKINGMAN  ? 


Labor's  complaint  is  its  poverty.  The  chief  creator  of 
wealth,  according  to  the  masters  of  political  economy,  it 
finds  itself  poor  while  making  others  rich  ;  in  its  own  pocket 
only  copper  pence,  while  with  the  touch  of  alchemy  it  is  turn- 
ing every  thing  to  gold.  If  this  poverty  can  be  shown  to  be 
labor's  own  fault,  the  punishment  of  its  inefficiency  and  thrift- 
lessness,  together  with  the  fault  of  nature,  the  hardship  im- 
posed by  the  stern  order  amid  whose  laws,  "mighty  and 
brazen,"  man  finds  himself  on  earth,  then  our  question  is  dis- 
charged. Admitting  the  full  force  of  both  of  these  factors  in 
the  problem  of  labor's  poverty,  but  believing  that  there  is 
another  factor  in  this  problem — the  wrongful  action  of  society 
— I  propose  to  point  out  some  of  the  many  particulars  in  which 
I  believe  our  civilization  is  at  fault  concerning  labor  ;  in  which 
the  State,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  legislates  so  as  to  in- 
terfere with  certain  great  natural  rights  of  man,  and  thus  com- 
mits an  injustice  to  the  workingman. 

I. 

There  is  first  the  right  of  all  men  to  an  equal  access  to  the 
bounteous  provisions  of  nature  for  human  support,  and  our 
civilization  is  unjust  if  it  shuts  any  man  off  therefrom. 

*  Address  at  the  Church  Congress,  Detroit,  October,  1884. 
133 


134  RIGHT  TO  LAND — TO  A   FAIR  FIGHT. 

The  mineral  resources  of  the  earth  and  the  productive  pow- 
ers of  the  surface  of  the  earth  are  the  provisions  of  Providence 
for  the  common  needs  of  man,  over  which  a  private  monopoly 
is  a  crime  against  man  and  a  sin  against  God.  Out  of  this 
fundamental  wrong  springs  some  of  the  deepest  sources  of 
labor's  poverty  in  our  modern  civilization.  As  Seneca  long 
ago  said  :  "While  nature  lay  in  common,  and  all  her  benefits 
were  promiscuously  enjoyed,  what  could  be  happier  than  the 
state  of  mankind,  when  people  lived  without  avarice  or  envy  ? 
What  could  be  richer  than  when  there  was  not  a  poor  man  to 
be  found  in  the  world  ?  So  soon  as  this  impartial  bounty  of 
Providence  came  to  be  restrained  by  covetousness,  so  soon  as 
individuals  appropriated  that  to  themselves  which  was  intended 
for  all,  then  did  poverty  creep  into  the  world. "* 

II. 

Labor  has  a  right  to  a  fair  chance  in  the  general  struggle  for 
existence,  a  right  not  to  be  handicapped  by  arbitrary  burdens  ; 
and,  if  our  civilization  fails  to  secure  this  right  to  the  working- 
man,  it  is  unjust  to  him. 

(i)  Our  civilization  does  thus  handicap  labor  by  its  oppres- 
sive taxation. 

The  national  debts  of  the  great  states  of  Europe  aggregate  a 
billion  dollars  [$1,000,000,000].  These  debts  represent  mainly 
the  entail  of  war.  Wars  have  been  carried  on,  in  nine  cases 
out  of  ten,  in  the  interests  of  kings  and  courts  and  aristocra- 
cies and  capital,  from  the  days  of  Alexander  to  the  attack  of 

*  This  point  was  merely  indicated  in  my  address,  because  Mr.  Henry 
George  was  upon  the  programme  and  the  subject  was  sure  to  receive  ample 
treatment  from  him.  It  is  not  elaborated  here  for  the  reason  that  it  is 
discussed  at  some  length  elsewhere  in  this  volume.  See  my  testimony  before 
the  Senate  Committee  on  Education  and  Labor. 


HANDICAPPED  BY   TAXATION,  135 

France  upon  China.  The  maintenance  of  war  establishments 
drains  the  resources  of  Europe  by  $800,000,000  per  annum. 
Their  withdrawal  of  labor  from  productive  industry  costs 
Europe  about  three  billions  of  dollars  per  annum  [$3,000,000- 
ooo].  Thorold  Rogers  has  shown  that  a  deep  depression  in 
the  condition  of  labor  in  England  began  in  the  eighteenth 
century,  in  consequence  of  the  cost  of  the  European  wars 
on  which  Great  Britain  entered — a  depression  which  continued 
down  to  the  second  quarter  of  the  present  century.  We  can 
quite  well  understand  this,  when,  as  the  cost  of  war,  we  find 
Europe  to-day  taxing  each  man,  woman,  and  child  $15  per 
annum.  With  each  laborer's  family  paying  out  of  the  $200 
which  its  head  earns,  on  an  average,  its  share  of  such  heavy 
charges  for  the  aristocratic  luxury  of  war,  how  can  the  work- 
ingman  be  other  than  poor  ? 

The  State,  territorial,  county,  and  municipal  debts  of  our 
land  aggregate  $1,201,803,177.  The  debt  of  New  York  city 
[$132,096,992]  imposes  a  taxation  of  $31,105,533 — /.  e.,  $3i/^r 
capita.  These  debts  are  indeed  partly  the  charges  for  needful 
public  improvements,  but  in  a  much  greater  measure  they 
represent  the  cost  of  civic  corruption,  of  the  jobbery  and 
thievery  which  fasten  like  leeches  upon  the  body  politic. 

The  nation's  taxes  take  about  one  dollar  out  of  every  ten 
that  the  average  citizen  spends — and  neither  of  our  great  po- 
litical parties  seems  able  to  propose  any  relief  from  this  cruel 
burden.  This  wrong  is  intensified  by  the  systematic  evasion 
of  their  proportionate  burdens  of  taxation  by  the  very  rich.  I 
speak  from  the  best  authority  possible,  when  I  say  that,  in  the 
leading  city  of  the  land,  many  of  the  wealthiest  citizens  habitu- 
ally evade  their  legal  taxes,  throwing  back  thus  their  share  of 
the  burden  upon  their  poorer  fellow-citizens — while  law  winks 
at  this  iniquity. 


136  PARTIAL   LEGISLATION. 

(2)  Our  civilization  handicaps  labor  by  partial  legislation. 

In  a  true  State,  Justice  should  be  absolutely  impartial.  She 
should  be  blind  to  all  distinctions  of  class.  She  should  have 
no  eyes  to  see  favorites.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  is  notorious 
that  legislation,  in  the  representative  assemblies  of  modern 
civilization,  while  ostensibly  in  the  interests  of  the  whole 
people  of  the  land,  is  actually,  for  the  most  part,  in  the  interests 
of  classes  rather  than  of  the  public  ;  builds  up  private  fortunes 
rather  than  a  commonwealth. 

The  Massachusetts  Bureau  of  Labor  recorded  this  judgment 
over  a  decade  ago  : 

"  Legislation  at  present  is  almost  devoted  to  the  purposes  of 
aggregated  wealth,  whether  in  the  form  of  railroads,  of  manu- 
factures, or  of  numerous  other  great  monetary  interests.  The 
time  of  legislatures,  national  and  State,  is  occupied  almost 
exclusively  with  the  consideration  of  questions  how  to  increase 
the  facilities  by  which  capital  may  be  accumulated,  while  very 
little  time  or  thought  is  given  to  the  question  how  the  laborer 
can,  by  lessened  work-time  and  increased  means,  achieve  that 
education  which  shall  elevate  him  to  a  truer  manhood."  * 

We  thought  last  December  that  the  Millennium  had  come 
in  this  country,  when  seven  or  eight  measures  for  the  improve- 
ment of  the  condition  of  its  wage-workers  were  introduced  in 
Congress.  It  looked  a  little  less  like  the  Millennium  when 
one  bill  barely  squeezed  through  at  the  end  of  the  session — all 
the  rest  choked  off  by  the  inability  of  the  people's  representa- 
tives to  see  any  merits  in  claims  that  were  not  urged  through 
seductive  lobbies.  Every  conceivable  interest  of  capital  is 
sedulously  guarded,  while  parallel  interests  of  labor  are  left  to 
shift  for  themselves. 

*  Fourth  Annual  Report  of  the  Bureau  of  Statistics  of  Labor,  1873,  p. 
501. 


MONOPOLIES  IN   TRANSPORTATION.  137 

What  abundant  safeguards  are  thrown  around  the  rich  bor- 
rower of  money  !  Yet,  in  the  State  of  New  York,  there  is  not 
a  single  law  securing  the  poor  man's  family  treasures,  which 
have  been  placed  in  the  hands  of  the  pawnbroker,  in  order  to 
raise  a  few  dollars  to  keep  his  children  from  being  turned  out 
into  the  street,  or  his  wife  from  being  buried  in  a  pauper's 
grave. 

All  sorts  of  schemes  for  the  investment  of  capital  are  habitu- 
ally fostered  by  legislation,  while  only  within  the  last  two  or 
three  years  has  there  been  more  than  one  State  in  our  Union 
having  a  bureau  of  labor  statistics. 

Over  200,000,000  of  acres  have  been  deeded  away  to  great 
railroad  corporations,  to  float  those  enterprises — an  empire  six 
times  the  size  of  New  York  State  ;  but  when,  amid  the  hardest 
of  hard  times  which  our  country  has  known,  workingmen 
asked  for  a  national  appropriation  to  organize  the  colonization 
of  surplus  labor,  they  were  told,  with  the  utmost  solemnity, 
that  the  eternal  order  of  nature  would  be  disturbed,  and  the 
everlasting  laws  of  society  overturned,  if  any  class  legislation 
should  be  allowed  !  Of  all  the  cant  of  a  canting  age,  there  is 
none  more  nauseous  than  the  solemn  chant  of  the  gospel  of 
laissez-faire,  which,  whenever  a  labor-bill  is  under  discussion, 
is  raised  by  the  very  men  whose  fortunes  have  been  builded 
up  by  special  legislation. 

(3)  Our  civilization  handicaps  labor  by  artificial  monop- 
olies in  exchange  and  transportation. 

Common  services  of  society,  which  ought  to  be  carried  on 
with  a  view  to  the  commonwealth,  have  been,  one  after  an- 
other, remanded  to  corporations  seeking  private  profits  ;  cor- 
porations called  into  being  by  the  State,  endowed  by  it  with 
vast  privileges,  protected  by  it  in  all  their  interests,  released 
by  it  from  nearly  all  responsibility  to  the  public,  and  freed 


138  WASTED  FRANCHISES. 

from  any  restraining  surveillance  of  government.  Into  the 
hands  of  these  corporations,  the  common  carriers  of  a  land, 
have  been  placed  powers  of  taxation  which,  as  a  United  States 
Senate  Committee  said,  Congress  would  hesitate  to  assume,  but 
which  the  tyranny  of  private  greed  has  not  scrupled  to  use  re- 
morselessly. Coal  costs  in  New  York,  on  an  average,  a  dollar 
and  a  half  a  ton  more  than  all  expenses  and  a  most  handsome 
profit  would  warrant.  That  is,  an  extra  tax  of  thirty-three  per 
cent,  is  placed  on  a  prime  necessity.  And,  when  the  ample 
supply  of  nature's  provision  for  warmth  lowers  its  price,  it  is 
in  the  power  of  private  corporations  to  shut  off  the  supply  and 
force  the  price  up.  Again  and  again,  we  have  seen  this  mon- 
strous wrong  committed,  and  every  poor  man  fleeced  to  fill  the 
pockets  of  a  few  mining  magnates  and  railroad  kings.  When 
the  profits  of  these  huge  corporations  grow  too  great  to  be 
made  public,  the  ingenious  device  of  stock-watering  makes  it 
all  right  before  the  people,  and  the  State  winks  again  while  the 
people  are  bled.  The  injustice  of  such  privileging  legislation 
is  made  even  more  monstrous  when  franchises  of  vast  value, 
instead  of  being  sold  to  the  hightest  bidder,  are  given  away  to 
private  corporations,  like  the  Gospel,  "without  money  and 
without  price." 

In  New  York  alone,  franchises  from  which  a  large  revenue 
might  have  been  drawn  by  the  city,  sufficient  to  have  materially 
reduced  our  burdens  of  taxation,  have  been  thus  bestowed 
upon  the  favorites  of  our  Metropolitan  Court,  the  Board  of 
Alderman. 

Our  governments  thus  deprive  themselves  of  the  power  of 
reducing  the  taxation  of  the.  many,  in  order  to  aggrandize  the 
few  ;  and  then,  on  the  principle  that  "  one  good  turn  deserves 
another,"  they  empower  these  privileged  classes  to  impose 
further  burdens  of  taxation  upon  the  public,  through  the  liberty 


INTERFERENCE  IN  DISTRIBUTION.  139 

secured  them  of  making  extortionate  charges  for  the  common 
services  of  which  they  have  a  practical  monopoly. 

III. 

Labor  is  entitled  to  a  just  share  in  the  wealth  that  it  pro- 
duces ;  and  it  is  bounden  on  our  civilization,  if  it  interfere  at 
all  in  the  natural  adjustment  of  profits  and  wages,  to  interfere 
impartially.  Its  failure  so  to  do  incurs  the  guilt  of  injustice. 

The  returns  of  industry  are  divided,  as  between  capital  and 
labor,  in  the  form  of  profits  and  wages.  Were  an  absolutely 
just  division  possible,  each  of  these  factors  in  the  problem  of 
production  would  receive  a  return  exactly  proportioned  to  the 
value  of  its  contribution  to  the  sum  of  the  wealth  created. 
Plainly,  no  such  ideal  justice  prevails.  The  disproportion  be- 
tween the  rewards  of  capital  and  labor  is  often  patent  to  every 
one.  No  jugglery  of  figures  can  conceal  this  obvious  inequali- 
ty, which  frequently  confronts  us.  This  glaring  inequality  in 
the  distribution  of  the  rewards  of  industry  becomes  a  glaring 
wrong,  if  it  is  furthered  by  the  neglect  of  any  legislation  that 
is  fairly  open  to  the  State  whereby  a  better  distribution  could 
be  aided,  or  by  the  passage  of  any  legislation  positively  aiding 
capital  as  against  labor.  Society  has  thus  interfered  sys- 
tematically in  the  natural  adjustment  of  wages. 

(i)  The  State  hinders  combination  among  workingmen,  by 
the  positive  or  negative  action  of  its  legislation,  and  thus  keeps 
wages  down. 

The  high  authority  of  Prof.  Thorold  Rogers  is  my  warrant 
for  the  assertion  that  through  three  centuries  the  English 
Parliament  has  legislated  to  keep  wages  down. 

Every  effort  at  combination  among  workingmen — their  only 
hope  of  contending  with  the  superior  power  of  capital — has 
been,  in  the  same  manner,  systematically  barred  by  legislation, 


140  IMPORTATION  OF  CHEAP  LABOR. 

in  most  lands.  Co-operative  societies,  friendly  societies,  trades 
unions,  and  all  other  forms  of  association  have  thus  been 
nearly  strangled  in  their  infancy  by  the  hostile  hand  of  legisla- 
tion. There  are  still  upon  the  statute  books  of  this  land 
"  conspiracy  laws  "  which,  as  Hon.  Abrani  S.  Hewitt  said  on 
the  floor  of  Congress,  "  are  a  disgrace  to  the  country."  While 
this  positive  wrong  of  legislation  against  labor  is  gradually  be- 
coming a  thing  of  the  past,  there  remains  the  negative  injustice 
of  the  State's  failure  to  act  in  legislation,  where  such  legisla- 
tion is  imperatively  called  for,  to  facilitate  labor's  association. 
While  every  possible  form  of  association  on  the  part  of  capital 
has  been  fostered  by  legislation,  labor  has,  even  now  in  many 
parts  of  our  country,  to  extemporize  some  adaptation  of  laws 
that  were  designed  for  capital,  when  it  would  combine  in  self- 
defence  or  mutual  enrichment  ;  and,  in  the  most  advanced 
States  of  the  Union,  still  lacks  the  facilities  necessary  for  some 
of  its  most  imperative  actions  in  association. 

(2)  The  State  legalizes  the  importation  of  cheap  foreign 
labor  under  contract  with  capitalists,  and  thus  lowers  wages. 

The  wages  of  labor  are  naturally  adjusted,  in  our  present 
system,  under  the  law  of  supply  and  demand.  If  the  demand 
for  laborers  is  in  excess  of  the  supply  in  any  country,  wages 
will  rise.  If  the  supply  is  in  excess  of  the  demand,  wages  will 
fall.  Again  and  again  in  the  history  of  Europe,  the  paucity  of 
labor  in  one  country  has  tempted  to  its  shores  superabundant 
labor  from  other  countries  ;  swamping  the  prosperity  of  the 
native  workmen  under  a  deluge  of  foreign  operatives,  hungry 
for  work,  and  willing  to  work  at  lower  wages.  This  is  a  hard- 
ship against  which  labor  pftentimes  has  occasion  to  remon- 
strate with  its  own  brotherhood.  But,  when  in  a  country  like 
our  own,  where  labor  is  not  over  abundant,  and  where  wages 
thus  stand  comparatively  high,  capital  is  free  under  law  to  en- 


CHEAP  FOREIGN  LABOR.  141 

ter  the  labor  market  of  the  world,  to  contract  for  gangs  'of 
the  low-waged  laborers  of  over-crowded  countries,  and  to  de- 
liver these  cargoes  upon  the  labor  market  of  our  land,  then  it 
seems  to  me  that  a  real  wrong  is  done  to  our  workingmen.  I 
am  aware  of  what  can  be  said  on  the  other  side  of  the  ques- 
tion. We  need  larger  supplies  of  labor  in  this  country,  for  the 
development  of  its  resources.  Any  legislation  closing  our 
ports  against  the  spontaneous  natural  influx  of  foreign  labor 
would  be  an  arrest  of  the  development  of  our  national  wealth. 
As  the  Germans  and  Irish  and  Scandinavians  whom  now  we 
count  as  American  laborers  came  freely  to  our  shores,  with  a 
warm  welcome,  so  let  their  suffering  brethren  come  from  all 
parts  of  Europe,  so  long  as  they  come  under  the  natural  law 
of  supply  and  demand.  Under  that  natural  action  they  will 
come,  on  the  whole,  no  faster  than  we  need  them.  As  the  land 
at  large  ceases  to  need  more  labor,  it  will  offer  less  attractions 
to  the  labor  of  other  lands,  in  the  shape  of  exceptionally  high 
wages,  and  thus  the  influx  will  be  naturally  checked.  It  is 
wholly  another  matter  when  capital  is  allowed,  under  the  pro- 
tection of  law,  to  force  down  wages  by  a  wholesale  importation 
of  cheaper  foreign  labor.  That  is  a  privilege  given  to  one  side 
in  the  contest  of  capital  and  labor,  which  interferes  with  the 
natural  equation  of  the  problem,  and  thus  creates  an  injustice. 
Little  as  one  may  sympathize  with  the  wild  outcry  against 
Chinese,  cheap  labor,  he  must  have  failed  to  study  the  deeper 
aspects  of  this  question  who  does  not  perceive  in  the  little  cloud 
over  the  Pacific  Coast  the  omens  of  a  storm  which  may  ulti- 
mately change  the  industrial  climate  of  our  country.  How  can 
the  unskilled  labor  of  New  York  maintain  even  its  present 
wages  against  the  gangs  of  Italian  lazzaroni  that  are  being  im- 
ported wholesale,  under  contract  ?  How  could  the  skilled 
labor  of  our  country  maintain  its  wages  against  the  millions 


142  STATE'S  INACTION  AS    TO  MACHINERY. 

whom  China  could  swarm  over  upon  our  shores,  capable,  by 
the  singular  imitativeness  of  the  race,  of  soon  mastering  most 
of  the  departments  of  mechanical  industry,  content  with  a  diet 
of  rice,  and  content  also  with  homes  patterned  upon  a  Five 
Points'  lodging  Tiouse.  The  Hocking  Valley  troubles  are  an 
ominous  sign  of  the  times.  Now,  when  the  American  laborer 
is  being  tickled  with  the  fair-sounding  promises  of  protection 
to  native  industry,  he  might  well  ask  himself  :  Why  are  cheap 
goods  to  be  heavily  taxed,  and  cheap  labor  to  walk  over  the 
gangway  into  the  office  of  its  importers  without  a  cent  of  duty  ? 

(3)  The  State  has  failed  to  secure  any  legislation  sufficiently 
guarding  the  interests  of  labor  from  the  dangers  that  are  in- 
volved in  the  introduction  of  machinery  into  industry,  while  it 
has  allowed  the  control  of  the  giant  forces  of  nature,  secured 
by  mechanism,  to  pass  into  the  hands  of  capital,  thus  lowering 
wages. 

Mechanism  is  revolutionizing  the  world  of  industry  and 
trade.  Man's  productive  power  has  increased  enormously  ; 
the  aggregate  wealth  of  civilization  has  multiplied  many  times; 
private  fortunes  of  a  colossal  magnitude  have  been  created  ; 
and  the  whole  conditions  of  life  have  been  favorably  changed 
for  a  considerable  portion  of  society.  It  is  questionable, 
however,  whether  labor  at  large  has  really  shared  commen- 
surately  in  this  increased  wealth  of  civilization.  John  Stuart 
Mill  sadly  confessed  that  it  was  doubtful  whether  all  this 
marvellous  development  had,  as  yet,  perceptibly  lightened 
the  toil  of  labor.  Political  economists  generally  have  been 
forced  to  face  the  fact  that,  somehow  or  other,  the  condition  of 
labor  shows  no  such  improvement  as  ought  to  have  resulted 
from  our  industrial  revolution.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  patent 
to  all,  that,  from  some  cause  or  other,  the  introduction  of  ma- 
chinery has  actually  wrought  a  positive  injury  to  labor,  in 


MACHINERY'S  EFFECT  ON  LABOR.  143 

many  respects  ~  and  has  made  its  outlook  seem  wellnigh  hope- 
less to  those  who  are  not  prepared  to  admit  the  guidance  of 
the  principle  of  justice  in  the  mazes  of  economics. 

The  introduction  of  machinery  has  developed  the  factory 
system,  with  its  division*  of  labor,  which  has  broken  the  old- 
time  workmen  up  into  bits  of  men,  each  knowing  only  its  own 
little  fragment  of  an  industrial  process,  and  as  such  made  in- 
capable of  becoming  free  master  workmen.  It  has  collected 
laborers  into  vast  industrial  establishments,  where  health  and 
even  life  has  become  endangered.  It  has  brought  about  the 
employment  of  women  and  children  in  the  factory,  and  thus 
has  lowered  wages.  It  has  thrown  all  human  labor  out  from 
one  field  after  another,  and  thus  has  massed  in  all  lands  an 
ever-growing  body  of  unemployed  or  partially  employed 
labor,  which  has  crowded  the  labor  market,  still  further  lower- 
ing wages.  It  has  turned  the  old-time  healthy,  steady  industry 
into  alternating  fits  of  fever  and  chill,  now  largely  over-pro- 
ducing goods,  and  then  bringing  on  a  paralysis  of  trade  which 
closes  mills  and  throws  hosts  of  laborers  out  of  work.  It  has 
taken  the  interest,  largely,  out  of  human  labor,  transferring  the 
intelligent  processes  of  industry  to  monster  mechanisms,  and 
reducing  men  to  automatic  feeders  of  these  steely  giants.  It 
is  making  the  necessary  plant  for  production  so  costly  as  to 
put  it  increasingly  out  of  the  power  of  operatives  to  rise  into  the 
rank  of  employers  of  labor.  It  is  more  and  more  making 
mechanism  and  not  man  the  true  producer,  the  creator  of 
all  wealth  ;  and  is  thus  taking  the  claim  which  workingmen 
have  heretofore  made  for  a  larger  share  of  reward  out  of  their 
mouths,  while  giving  capital,  the  owner  of  these  costly  me- 
chanical workers,  a  new  justification  for  larger  profits. 

What  has  the  State  done  to  guard  the  interests  of  labor,  thus 
jeopardized  by  this  industrial  revolution  ? 


144  STATE'S  ACTION  AS    TO  MACHINERY. 

It  has  never,  to  my  knowledge,  tried  to  restrain  the  employ- 
ment of  woman  and  child  labor.  It  has  only  of  late,  and  in 
some  rare  instances,  essayed  to  guard  the  conditions  of  factory 
labor.  Only  within  a  couple  of  decades  have  some  of  the  New 
England  States  led  off  in  legislation  limiting  the  hours  of  em- 
ployment of  women  and  children.  Still,  to-day,  in  many  of 
our  States,  the  eight  hours  which  constituted  a  day's  toil 
for  men  in  England,  three  centuries  ago,  may  be  wellnigh 
doubled  for  tender  women  and  weak  children  ;  and  no  hand  of 
law  is  outreached  to  stay  the  greed  of  capital.  Only  within 
the  last  half  of  our  decade  has  the  factory  legislation  of  Eng- 
land attained  its  present  noble  form,  while  there  is  not  one 
State  in  our  Union  which  has  on  its  statute-books  any  such 
code,  securing  health  and  life  to  the  inmates  of  our  great  bar- 
racks of  industry. 

This  inaction  of  the  State,  where  action  is  imperatively 
needed,  is  made  yet  worse  by  its  action  where  none  is  re- 
quired. 

Why  have  these  giant  forces  of  nature,  called  in  by  man  to 
his  service,  made  labor's  condition  harder  and  its  prospects 
darker  ? 

Plainly  because,  as  a  high  authority  in  eccnomics  has  con- 
fessed, and  as  every  one  may  see,  the  control  of  the  machinery 
has  fallen  into  the  hands  of  the  other  partner  in  industry. 
Capital  would  naturally  have  possessed  itself  of  a  large  share 
in  the  control  of  these  forces,  had  it  not  been  aided  by  legisla- 
tion. In  that  case  there  would  have  been  a  social  hardship. 
As  it  is,  legislation  has  intervened  against  labor,  and  thus  there 
is  a  social  wrong.  Could  the  State  have  stepped  in  to  the  con- 
trol of  these  monster  forces  of  nature,  when  first  they  trooped 
to  the  feet  of  man,  at  the  call  of  the  arch-magician  Science,  as 
now  Socialists  would  have  it  do,  and  as,  hereafter,  it  may  be 


CAPITAL   CONTROLLING  MACHINERY.  145 

driven  to  do  out  of  sheer  necessity,  the  age  of  mechanism 
might  have  fulfilled  the  dream  of  Aristotle  concerning  human 
progress.  If,  short  of  this  heroic  action,  the  State  had  legis- 
lated with  a  view  to  making  these  monster  forces  serve  the 
people  at  large  rather  than  a  privileged  few — since  indeed  they 
are  no  man's  creation  but  the  creatures  of  the  All  Father,  the 
common  property  of  the  children  of  the  Most  High — the  worst 
evils  which  they  have  brought  about  would  not  have  come  to 
pass,  and  much  of  the  good  that  they  would  seem  to  have  been 
sent  to  accomplish  would  have  been  realized.  Whereas,  what- 
ever the  motives  prompting  such  action,  the  State  has  so  legis- 
lated as  to  hand  over  these  giants  of  nature  to  the  exclusive 
bidding  of  capital.  The  system  of  patenting  inventions  has 
created  a  monopoly  of  mechanism.  It  is  manifestly  just  that 
discovery  should  be  encouraged  by  a  liberal  reward.  It  is  as 
manifestly  unjust  that  those  rewards  should  be  legally  consti- 
tuted a  perpetual  or  long-continued  and  excessive  tax  upon  all 
the  labor  which  most  needs  to  avail  itself  of  these  improve- 
ments. It  is  manifestly  still  more  unjust  when  the  right  of 
reward  which  the  discoverer  has  fairly  earned  is  legally  allowed 
to  be  wrested  from  him,  under  the  pressure  of  poverty,  or  to  be 
stolen  from  him  by  the  wiles  of  cunning,  and  is  thus  estab- 
lished as  the  privilege  of  capitalists  whereby  they  may  levy 
toll  upon  the  necessary  toil  of  a  whole  people.  Yet,  by  just 
such  a  system  of  legal  favoritism  have  the  benefits  of  machinery 
been  turned  aside  to  the  building  up  of  huge  private  fortunes 
for  a  few  at  the  cost  of  the  many.  Sewing-machines,  which  in 
this  country  sell  for  seventy-five  dollars,  are  taken  to  England 
and  sold  there  for  fifteen  dollars.  In  other  words,  law,  in  this 
free  country,  privileges  capital  to  control  one  of  the  most  in- 
dispensable of  machines,  and  to  exact,  over  and  above  the 
profit  at  which  it  is  willing  to  sell  in  another  land,  a  tax  of 


146  LABOR  MUST  CONTROL  MACHINERY. 

sixty  dollars  on  every  instrument  bought  by  the  wretched 
creatures  who  sing  in  our  great  cities  "  The  Song  of  the 
Shirt." 

Even  the  non-interference  of  the  State,  in  the  struggle  for 
the  control  of  mechanism,  is  a  real  injustice.  So  omnipotent 
are  these  giant  forces  which  have  been  harnessed  to  machinery, 
so  necessary  to  labor's  freedom  is  the  mastery  of  them,  so 
hopeless  is  its  struggle  for  this  mastery,  if  unaided  in  the  con- 
test with  capital,  so  certain  is  its  complete  enslavement  be- 
neath these  costly  monsters  if  it  fail  to  master  them,  that 
nothing  less  than  the  positive  action  of  the  State  in  legislation, 
aiding  in  such  control,  will  prevent  injustice. 

The  portentous  fact  that  the  average  wages  of  labor  in  this 
country  have  fallen  in  ten  years  from  $425  per  annum  to  $325, 
as  a  comparison  of  the  census  returns  of  1870  and  1880  shows 
— a  loss  of  25  per  cent,  in  a  decade — is  the  conclusive  proof 
that  forces  are  at  work  tending  to  lower  dangerously  labor's 
present  share  in  the  rewards  of  industry,  and  calling  therefore 
upon  the  State  for  prompt  and  effective  action  in  order  to  pre- 
vent greater  injustice.* 

*  Prof.  Hadley,  Chief  of  the  Connecticut  Bureau  of  Labor,  considers 
the  United  States  census  figures  the  most  reliable  authority  accessible  on 
the  question  of  wages.  Without  doubt  the  chief  factor  in  this  alarming 
fall  of  wages  is  the  enormous  immigration  of  unskilled  labor  during  this 
decade.  The  figures  do  not  represent  any  positive  decrease  in  skilled  labor, 
but  rather  a  larger  increase  of  cheap  labor,  lowering  the  average  wages. 
Hosts  of  Italians,  Bohemians,  etc.,  have  come  into  our  country  who  are 
willing  to  work  for  less  wages  than  those  generally  paid  here,  and  who  find 
their  own  condition  bettered  by  these  wages — to  them  a  decided  increase. 
But  such  a  large  increase  of  cheap  labor  tends  certainly  to  drag  down  the 
wages  of  those  who  were  hitherto  receiving  higher  pay  among  us,  and  thus 
the  fact  of  such  a  large  increase  of  cheap  labor  is  ominous  for  our  unskilled 
laborers. 


THE   CASE  AGAINST  SOCIETY.  147 

IV. 

Before  the  great  jury  gathered  here  to-night,  I  plead  labor's 
case  against  society. 

I  charge  our  civilization  with  injustice  against  the  working- 
man  ;  not  in  that  he  is  poor,  for  that  poverty  may  be  his  own 
fault,  or  it  may  be  the  hardship  enforced  by  nature,  in  the 
stern  struggle  for  existence  which  she  imposes  upon  all  crea- 
tures ;  but  in  that  he  is  made  more  poor  than  his  own  faults 
or  the  hardships  of  nature  would  have  made  him,  by  the  failure 
of  society  to  legislate  impartially  concerning  him,  by  its  hostile 
legislation  against  him,  and  by  its  allowance  thus  under  law  of 
many  monstrous  injustices.  I  have  laid  before  you,  as  counts 
in  this  indictment,  the  fact  that  the  systems  of  land  tenure  in 
our  modern  civilization  bar  the  right  of  each  man  to  free 
access  to  the  provision  of  nature  for  human  support ;  the  fact 
that  the  State  fails  to  secure  for  each  man  his  right  to  a  fair 
fight  in  the  struggle  for  existence,  and  places  labor  under 
heavy  odds,  by  its  oppressive  taxation,  by  its  privileging  legis- 
lation, and  by  its  creation  of  monopolies  ;  and  the  fact  that 
the  State  interferes  partially  between  capital  and  labor,  in  the 
natural  adjustment  of  the  relation  of  profits  and  wages,  by  its 
laws  forbidding  or  hindering  free  combinations  of  labor,  by 
its  allowance  of  the  importation  of  cheap  foreign  labor  under 
contract  with  capital,  and  by  its  practically  deeding  over  the 
control  of  machinery,  which  is  revolutionizing  industry,  to 
capital.  Because  of  this  inequitable  discharge  of  its  solemn 
duties  as  legislator  and  ruler,  I  ask  for  a  verdict  of  "  guilty  " 
against  our  civilization. 

To  what  tribunal,  then,  is  the  workingman  to  carry  his  ap- 
peal ?  To  the  tribunal  of  force  ?  Never,  except  as  a  last 
resort.  Dynamite  may  be  a  gospel  in  Russia,  where  no  other 


148  THE   CHURCH'S  APPEAL    TO  JUSTICE. 

form  of  protest  can  be  made.  It  is  the  unpardonable  crime  in 
a  land  where  every  form  of  protest  is  open  to  labor,  and  where 
it  is  its  own  fault  if  it  do  not  avail  itself  of  these  all-sufficient 
means  of  redressing  its  wrongs.  The  supreme  tribunal  among 
a  free  people  is  the  high  and  holy  court  of  Justice — daughter 
of  the  Eternal  who  loveth  righteousness.  She  sits  throned 
above  the  powers  of  nature ;  the  imperial  ruler  to  whom  all 
the  most  masterful  forces  that  sway  men  do  homage  ;  holding 
in  her  left  hand  the  balances  of  equity,  in  which,  so  fine  their 
perfect  poise,  a  hair  will  turn  the  scale  ;  holding  in  her  right 
hand,  to  enforce  her  exigent  decrees,  the  sceptre  of  omnipo- 
tence ;  her  awful  eye  penetrating  all  sophisms  ;  her  touch  dis- 
enchanting all  illusions  ;  her  voice  thundering  through  the 
depths  of  man's  conscience  the  summons  which  rouses  his 
highest  energies,  and  inflames  his  most  ardent  enthusiasms  ! 
Let  Justice  speak  and  it  shall  be  done,  let  her  command  and  it 
shall  stand  fast ! 

Who  shall  lead  the  workingman  into  this  high  and  holy 
court,  and  plead  his  case  before  this  august  Judge — if  not  the 
Church  of  the  Carpenter's  Son,  whose  mission,  like  that  of  her 
masterv  is  to  "  help  them  to  right  that  suffer  wrong  "  ?  In 
the  righting  of  these  wrongs  she  will  do  more  to  revive  her 
own  life  than  councils  and  conventions  can  ever  accomplish. 
Senator  Blair  told  me  that  it  was  the  almost  unanimous  testi- 
mony of  representatives  of  labor  before  his  Senate  Committee, 
that  Christianity  was  steadily  losing  its  hold  upon  the  working- 
men  of  the  land.  This  alarming  fact,  which  every  one  with 
his  eyes  open  can  see,  may  be  partly  due  to  the  intellectual 
doubt  which  is  everywhere  at-work  to-day,  and  nowhere  more 
powerfully  than  among  the  hard-headed  sons  of  toil ;  a  doubt 
for  which  the  churches  are  responsible,  in  so  far  as  they  are  re- 
fusing to  accept  new  truth  and  by  it  re-interpret  the  old  faiths. 


SECRET  OF  LABOR'S  IRRELIGION.  149 

This  alienation  is,  however,  much  more  the  result  of  a  moral 
doubt.  The  sense  of  injustice  quickened  in  those  who  suffer 
these  social  wrongs  presents  an  awful  alternative.  If  these 
injustices  be  the  result  of  nature's  order,  as  orthodox  econo- 
mists declare,  then  is  nature  unjust,  and  the  sweet  and  sacred 
vision  of  a  Father  God  is  a  mocking  dream,  which  only  makes 
more  bitter  the  awakening  of  man  to-day.  This  is  the  secret 
of  the  atheism  of  nihilistic  Russia  and  of  socialistic  Germany 
and  France.  If  these  injustices  be  the  fault  of  society,  and  the 
Christian  Church  defends  them  or  accepts  them  in  silence, 
then  is  that  Ckurch  a  false  Church  of  the  living,  righteous 
God,  and  labor  may  well  turn  away,  saying,  It  cannot  cast  these 
devils  out.  Let  that  Church  truly  fast  and  pray  until  its  vision 
be  clarified,  its  tongue  loosed,  and  its  right  arm  nerved  ;  and 
then,  when  the  world  sends  to  it,  saying,  "  Who  art  thou  ? "  it 
may  answer,  as  of  old  its  master  answered  :  "  Go  tell  what 
things  ye  see  :  the  blind  see,  the  deaf  hear,  the  lame  walk,  and 
to  the  poor  the  Gospel — the  glad  tidings  of  Justice,  divine  and 
human — is  preached  ;  "  and  the  world  will  believe  and  love,  and 
loyally  follow  it  once  more. 


V. 


OLD-TIME    GUILDS   AND   MODERN    COMMER- 
CIAL  ASSOCIATIONS. 


OUTLINE. 

Historic  forefathers  of  the  Chambei  of  Commerce.     Classic  prototypes — 
Mediaeval  guilds — Original  character  of. 

1.  Economic  merits  of  the  guilds.     Strikes  and  arbitration — Industrial 
partnership. 

2.  Guilds  had  higher  than  economic  aims.     Sought  to  establish  brother- 
hood— Cherished  craft-pride  and  honor — Punished  offences — Lessons  here 
for  our  modern  guilds. 

3.  Need  of  pondering  these  aspects  of  the  old  guilds.     Unsatisfactory 
conditions   of   the    present   world — Unprecedented  revolution  going  on — 
Forecast  of  probabilities — Need  of    more   regulation — Regulating   power 
found  in  business  associations. 

4.  A  vision  of  the  future. 


OLD-TIME   GUILDS   AND   MODERN    COMMERCIAL 
ASSOCIATIONS.* 


MR.  CHAIRMAN  :  It  is  a  solemn  matter  for  a  plain  parson  to 
confront  such  a  body  as  the  Chamber  of  Commerce  of  New 
York,  and  reflect,  as  he  rises  to  his  feet,  that  he  is  expected  to 
offer  its  members  something  worthy  of  their  venerable  and 
illustrious  association.  Bountiful  as  has  been  the  hospitality 
of  the  Committee  of  Arrangements,  one  who  sits  up  here  is 
forced  to  sigh  because  of  its  strange  oversight  in  not  pro- 
viding beforehand  a  mental  menu,  a  bill  of  topics,  courses  of 
ideas,  cordials  of  suggestion  for  the  invited  guests,  out  of  which 
they  might  help  themselves  freely  to  speeches  without  taxing 
their  intellectual  digestion.  What  in  the  world,  I  said  to  my- 
self, am  I  to  talk  about,  with  any  hope  of  freshness,  after  one 
hundred  and  sixteen  years  of  post-prandial  eloquence  ? 

One  thing,  I  felt,  that  I  must  not  offer  such  a  body  A  dis- 
tinguished German  clergyman,  who  has  just  left  our  shores, 
was  warned  by  his  host,  before  he  went  to  address  a  conference 
of  one  of  the  most  intellectual  of  American  denominations, 
that  he  must  not  give  them  any  "taffy."  Unfamiliar  with  our 
rich  and  copious  vocabulary  of  slang,  he  pondered  his  friend's 

*  Address  at  the  annual  banquet  of  the  Chamber  of  Commerce,  New 
York,  November  18,  1884. 

15.3 


154  ANCESTRY  OF  THE   CHAMBER. 

advice  with  increasing  perplexity.  With  straight  and  solemn 
face  he  commenced  his  address  :  "  My  friends,  I  must  not  give 
you  any  taffy  !  "  The  laughter  that  followed  his  opening  sen- 
tence was  utterly  unintelligible  to  him,  until  he  reached  his 
friend's  house,  and  learned  the  meaning  of  this  strange  new 
word,  which  he  doubtless  entered  in  his  diary,  for  the  benefit 
of  his  friends  in  the  Fatherland. 

A  whole  class  of  subjects  is  plainly  ruled  out  of  my  possibil- 
ities. Parsons  in  politics  are  at  a  heavy  discount  just  now. 
One  particular  little  busy  B.  has  "  improved  his  shining  hour  " 
only  too  well.  All  scepticisms  as  to  the  efficiency  of  Samson's 
weapon  have  forever  disappeared.  My  friend,  who  saw  me 
safely  stowed  away  behind  this  table,  warned  me  on  no  account 
to  speak  of  free  trade.  Of  course,  therefore,  that  was  the  very 
subject  of  which  I  wanted  to  speak.  I  seriously  thought  of 
emulating  the  logical  agility  and  economic  comprehensiveness 
of  a  certain  friend  of  mine,  who,  in  his  young  and  callow  days, 
attending  his  first  political  meeting,  was  overheard  shouting 
lustily  :  "  Hurrah  for  free  trade  and  a  protective  tariff  !  " 
However,  as  such  a  toast  might  have  seemed  to  hold  allusion 
to  one  of  our  great  political  parties,  it  seemed  best  to  pass  that 
by  also. 

Then  I  fell  to  thinking  how  much  more  venerable  this  Asso- 
ciation really  is  than  it  realizes.  Its  own  individual  history 
may  be  comprised  within  one  hundred  and  sixteen  years,  but 
its  ancestry  is  almost  as  remote  as  the  period  of  the  dear  de- 
parted Adam,  over  whom  Mark  Twain  wept  so  sensitively. 

Classic  civilization  knew  the  forefathers  of  our  Chamber  of 
Commerce,  the  Collegia  of  Rome  and  the  Eranoi  of  Greece  ; 
mutual  benefit  associations  among  the  small  traders  of  the 
ancient  world,  whose  central  observance  was  a  common  meal, 
a  banquet  at  once  religious  and  social. 


MEDIEVAL    GUILDS.  I  55 

Mediaeval  Europe  knew  the  nearer  ancestors  of  such  associ- 
ations as  this,  the  guilds  of  which  we  have  always  known 
vaguely  but  which  we  are  only  beginning  to  know  accurately 
of  late. 

You  may  open  such  standard  histories  as  Guizot's  "  History 
of  Civilization  "  and  Hallam's  "  Middle  Ages,"  and  find  in 
them  no  reference  at  all  to  these  great  trade  guilds,  which,  as 
we  now  see,  were  among  the  most  powerful  factors  in  moulding 
the  mediaeval  world  into  the  noble  seriousness  which  charac- 
terized its  industry  and  commerce,  and  which,  through  the 
world  of  business,  charged  the  whole  society  of  the  period. 
Even  Lecky  has  a  scant  paragraph  of  praise  for  these  guilds. 
Yet  there  is  perhaps  no  field  in  the  history  of  industry  and 
trade  and  commerce  that  promises  a  richer  yield  of  hints  for 
the  perfecting  of  our  wonderful  world  of  business. 

These  guilds  were  industrial  and  trade  and  commercial 
associations.  In  the  earlier  periods  they  were  societies  of 
merchants,  and  later  on  of  craftsmen,  banded  together  at  first 
for  "  mutual  help,  mutual  enjoyment,  and  mutual  encourage- 
ment in  good  endeavors."  They  grew  in  later  times  into 
corporations,  possessing  an  almost  absolute  control  over 
their  respective  spheres  of  industry  and  commerce  ;  each 
constituting  a  little  self-governing  republic,  regulating  the 
internal  affairs  of  the  trade  or  craft  with  sovereign  sway  ;  all 
alike,  in  the  palmy  days  of  these  brotherhoods,  animated  by 
lofty  aims  and  a  noble  spirit  ;  many  of  them  winning  a 
power  and  wealth  which  might  make  our  biggest  corporations 
envious. 

May  we  not  be  able  to  learn  something  from  these  Chambers 
of  Commerce  and  Boards  of  Trade  of  the  past,  which  might 
prove  helpful  to  us  of  the  present  ?  Of  course  we  all  know 
that  we  are  infinitely  wiser  than  our  fathers  ; 


156  GUILD  PROVISIONS. 

"  And  John  P. 
Robinson  he 

Sez  they  did  n't  know  everythin' 
down  in  Judee." 

Still,  our  fathers  were  not  utter  fools. 

There  are  some  minor  features  of  the  old-time  guilds  which 
their  successors  of  the  present  have  quite  faithfully  imitated. 
According  to  one  of  the  best-received  explanations  of  the  name 
guild,  it  is  drawn  from  the  Danish  gilde,  a  feast  or  banquet ; 
thus  pointing  to  the  central  rite  of  the  society — a  custom  of 
eating  and  drinking  together  ;  a  fact  which  goes  far  to  estab- 
lish the  undoubted  scientific  doctrine  that  man  belongs  to  the 
order  known  to  naturalists  as  the  gastrozoa  or  living  stomachs. 
Accordingly,  we  find  in  the  statutes  of  an  early  English  guild 
directions  for  a  monthly  meeting,  "  at  which  there  is  to  be  bytt- 
fylling  and  a  refection."  * 

Now,  this  may  be  a  bite,  of  which  we  have  been  partaking, 
but  it  is  certainly  a  very  filling  bytt. 

One  of  the  early  by-laws  concerning  this  bytt-filling  is, 
indeed,  duly  honored  in  part  by  us,  but  truth  compels  me  to 
say  that  it  is  in  part  grossly  disregarded  :  ''  During  dinner  they 
shall  abstain  from  scandalous  talk,  drunkenness  and  unseemly 
disputes." 

So  far  we  have  been  faithful  to  the  old  rule.  But  what  has 
become  of  the  rest  of  the  enactment :  "  Four  dishes,  and  no 
more,  are  to  be  served,  and  towards  evening  everybody  is  to  go 
home."  f 

This  particular  descendant  of  the  ancient  guilds  has  been  scru- 
pulous in  observing  the  statute,  repeated  as  a  favorite  ordinance 
of  the  patrician  guilds  of  Denmark,  Germany  and  Belgium, 

*  "  Encyclopedia  Britannica,"  vol.  xi.,  p.  260. 

f  "  History  and  Development  of  Gilds"  :  Lujo  Brentano,  p.  27. 


ECONOMIC  FEA  TURES.  I  57 

that  no  one  "  with  dirty  hands,"  or  "  with  blue  nails,"  or  "  who 
hawked  his  wares  in  the  streets,"  should  become  a  member.* 

We  pass,  however,  from  these  serious  matters  to  other  fea- 
tures of  the  old-time  guilds,  perhaps  no  less  important. 

I. 

Certain  economic  features  of  the  guilds  merit  our  careful 
consideration.  The  world  of  business  was  a  much  smaller  and 
simpler  organization  of  old  than  that  in  which  it  is  your  lot  to 
live  to-day,  gentlemen  of  this  Chamber.  Its  perplexities  were 
fewer,  and  its  complexities  less  involved  than  those  which 
snarl  us  up  until  we  are  tempted  to  cry  out,  with  the  poor 
collier  in  Hard  Times,  "  It  's  a'  a  muddle."  Still,  our  ances- 
tors met  the  lower  forms  of  our  own  troubles. 

Disputes  arose  then,  as  now,  between  rival  firms,  but  those 
worthy  masters  found  abetter  way  of  adjusting  their  difficulties 
than  "cutting  rates."  It  was  everywhere  the  rule  that  guild 
brothers  should  bring  their  cases  of  contention  before  the 
guild,  in  order  to  secure  some  amicable  adjustment  of  those 
difficulties.  Among  the  provisions  of  the  Gild  of  the  Tailors  of 
Lincoln  (founded  in  1328)  was  one  to  this  effect : 

If  any  quarrel  or  strife  arises  between  any  bretheren  or  sisteren  of  the 
gild  (which  God  forbid)  the  bretheren  and  sisteren  shall,  with  the  advice 
of  the  Gracemen  and  Wardens,  do  their  best  to  make  peace  between  the 
parties,  provided  that  the  case  is  such  as  can  be  thus  settled  without  a 
breach  of  the  law.  And  whoever  will  not  obey  the  judgment  of  the  breth- 
eren shall  lose  his  gildship,  unless  he  thinks  better  of  it  within  three  days, 
and  then  he  shall  pay  a  stone  of  wax,  unless  he  have  grace,  f 

*  "  History  and  Development  of  Gilds  "  :  Lujo  Brentano,  p.  43. 

f  "  English  Gilds  :  The  Original  Ordinances  of  more  than  One  Hund- 
red Early  English  Gilds."  Toulmin  Smith.  Early  English  Text  Society 
p.  183. 


158  STRIKES  AND  ARBITRATION. 

Fancy  what  a  millennium  it  would  be  were  we  to  behold  the 
Pennsylvania  Railroad  and  the  Reading,  the  New  Yoik  Central 
and  the  Erie,  bringing  their  disagreements  before  a  great 
national  railroad  brotherhood ! 

Disputes  there  were,  also,  in  those  good  old  times,  between 
master  and  men.  That  modern  improvement,  "  the  strike," 
appears,  after  all,  to  have  had  a  venerable  antiquity  ;  for  we 
hear  of  "  strikes  "  on  the  part  of  the  workmen  in  the  building 
trades  in  the  middle  ages,  very  much  like  those  that  worry  the 
life  out  of  contractors  to-day.  To  do  away  with  these  abomi- 
nations, the  guilds  hit  upon  two  measures.  One  was  arbitration. 
A  London  guild,  in  the  middle  of  the  fourteenth  century,  "  or- 
dained that  from  henceforth,  if  there  be  any  dispute  moved 
between  any  master  and  his  man,  such  dispute  shall  be  settled 
by  the  warden  of  the  trade."  * 

In  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century  we  are  beginning  to 
learn  that  a  better  way  of  settling  such  disputes  than  the  "  lock- 
out "  or  the  "  strike  "  is  the  simple,  common-sense,  human  way 
of  mutually  referring  the  dispute  to  some  competent  and  impar- 
tial arbitration.  Already,  in  England  and  in  France,  boards  of 
arbitration  are  established,  with  most  happy  results.  Individ- 
ual firms,  with  far-seeing  sagacity,  have  acted  on  the  principle. 
But  what  a  mighty  change  would  be  wrought  in  our  troubled 
world  of  industry,  if  our  great  industrial  associations  would 
take  the  lead  in  re-introducing  this  beneficent  principle  ! 

That  most  constant  of  all  disputes  between  employer  and 
employee — the  rate  of  wages — arose  in  the  olden  times,  as  it 
arises  now,  in  wearisome  re-iteration.  The  wisdom  of  the  guilds 
— a  wisdom  born  of  large-heartedness  as  well  as  of  large-mind- 
edness — devised  the  best  method  of  preventing  such  disputes 
which  the  world  has  yet  found.  Instead  of  rolling  off  the  so- 

*  "  History  and  Development  of  Gilds  "  :   Lujo  Brentano,  p.  80. 


INDUSTRIAL   PARTNERSHIP.  159 

lution  of  the  problem  of  the  relation  of  profits  and  wages  upon 
so-called  natural  law  ;  instead  of  teaching  their  workmen  that 
it  was  all  a  matter  of  supply  and  demand  ;  instead  of  separating 
the  head  and  the  hands  in  antagonistic  interests  ;  instead  of 
creating  thus  a  chronic  strife  between  capital  and  labor — the 
guilds  sought  to  make  real  that  unity  between  capital  and  labor 
of  which  we  hear  so  much  in  the  theories  of  books  and  so  little 
in  the  actual  facts  of  life,  by  that  other  simple,  common-sense, 
human  principle  of  industrial  partnership.  In  the  cloth  manu- 
factures of  the  Belgian  towns,  which  date  from  the  first  century 
of  our  era — their  products  having  been  even  then  greatly  in  de- 
mand in  Rome — and  which  were  carried  on  upon  a  larger  scale 
and  for  a  more  extended  market  than  those  of  any  other  peo- 
ple in  Europe,  the  workmen  "  took  part,  as  delegates  of  their 
class,  even  in  the  supervision  of  labor  ;  gave  their  consent  to 
the  ordinances  for  regulating  the  trade,  and  received  their  pay 
in  a  definite  proportion  to  that  of  their  masters.  In  some  places, 
as  at  Bruges,  the  men  received  a  real  share  in  their  masters' 
profits."  * 

So  that  our  very  modern  discovery  that  the  solution  of  the 
problem  of  capital  and  labor  lies  in  profit-sharing,  is  in  reality 
the  re-exhuming  of  one  of  the  institutions  of  the  old-time 
guilds.  Leclaire  and  Godin  are  but  repeating  the  examples  of 
men  whose  names  are  now  forgotten.  And  Leclaire  and  Godin 
are  the  heralds  of  a  new  order,  in  which  peace  shall  be  upon 
earth  between  men  of  good  will. 

I  may  not  forget,  as  I  stand  amid  the  members  of  the  Cham- 
ber of  Commerce,  that  it  was  in  the  sail  which  whitened  the 
blue  waters  of  the  ^Egean,  a  century  ago,  that  John  Stuart  Mill 
found  the  first  beginnings  known  to  him  in  modern  history  of 
the  principle  of  profit-sharing  ;  a  principle  which  the  Greek 

*  "  History  and  Development  of  Gilds,"  p.  72. 


l6o  MORAL  AIM  OF  GUILDS. 

merchant-captains  had  even  then  introduced  among  their  sea- 
men. Nor  can  I  forget,  in  the  presence  of  these  representa- 
tives of  American  commerce,  that  it  was  the  staunch  old 
whalers  which  sailed  from  our  own  soft-climed  Nantucket  long 
ago  that  this  same  wise,  just  and  brotherly  principle  was  first 
established  in  our  western  business  life  ;  those  shrewd  old 
Yankees  having  found  out  thus  early  that  the  best  bond  of 
peace  between  master  and  men  is  a  common  interest  in  their 
conjoint  work  ;  that  the  best  spur  to  faithful  work  is  a  prospect 
of  sharing  in  the  gains  of  that  work.  How  auspicious  an  omen 
for  the  peaceful  relationships  of  master  and  men  in  the  future, 
if,  beneath  the  fostering  hand  of  such  a  modern  guild  as  this, 
the  commerce  of  the  metropolis  of  the  New  World  should  re- 
introduce  this  old-time  institution  ! 


II. 


In  truth,  as  we  study  those  old-time  guilds,  even  in  their 
more  purely  economic  aspects,  we  find  a  higher  than  economic 
aim  before  the  worthies  who  shaped  their  plans  and  policies. 
They  were  seeking  to  attain,  as  far  as  might  be,  justice,  and 
thus  to  create  a  real  brotherhood  among  men.  Their  ordi- 
nances were  framed,  as  one  of  the  old  guild  laws  declared,  for 
the  "  better  relief  and  comodytie  of  the  porer  sorte."  *  Masters, 
who  withheld  from  the  workmen  the  wages  to  which  they  were 
entitled,  were  compelled  by  the  guild  authorities  to  make  due 
payment.  So,  then,  they  could  turn  round  and  enact,  that 
"  If  any  serving  man  shall  conduct  himself  in  any  other  manner 
than  properly  towards  his  master,  and  act  rebelliously  towards 
him,  no  one  of  the  trade  shall  set  him  to  work  until  he  shall 

*  "  History  and  Development  of  Gilds,"  p.  67. 


TRADE  HONOR   CHERISHED.  l6l 

have  made  amends  before  the  mayor  and  aldermen,  and  be- 
fore them  such  misprision  shall  be  redressed.  "  * 

Verily,  as  certain  of  the  guild  statutes  ran,  "  not  eating  and 
drinking,  but  mutual  assistance  and  justice"  were  the  principal 
objects  of  the  guild.  It  was  everywhere  the  first  principle  of 
the  guild,  a  principle  to  which  every  member  had  to  bind  him- 
self by  oath,  "  to  assist  him  only  who  had  justice  on  his  side."  f 

"  These  guilds  appear  as  an  enlarged  great  family,  whose 
object  is  to  afford  such  assistance  to  their  members,  in  all  cir- 
cumstances of  life,  as  one  brother  might  expect  from  another, 
and  consequently,  above  all  things,  protection  against  the  un- 
bridled arbitrariness  of  the  mighty,  whether  exercised  by  vio- 
lence or  attempted  by  law."  J 

Even  for  the  pecuniary  success  of  industry  and  trade  and 
commerce,  the  worthies  of  the  past  perceived  that  it  was  need- 
ful to  foster  and  maintain  such  immaterial  qualities  as  justice 
and  truth,  honesty  and  honor.  To  procure  permanent  pros- 
perity in  their  towns  and  to  keep  the  golden  tide  of  trade 
flowing  steadily  through  their  marts,  they  set  themselves  to  the 
task  of  securing  sound  work,  good  measures,  square  accounts, 
faithfully  executed  contracts  ;  the  observance,  in  every  branch 
of  business,  of  the  eighth  commandment.  To  accomplish  this, 
every  guild  first  sought  to  breathe  a  lofty  spirit  of  honor  through 
its  membership.  Each  guild  made  of  its  trade  or  craft  a  high 
and  noble  vocation,  an  occupation  in  which  it  was  an  honor  to 
engage.  It  clothed  the  merchant  and  the  craftsman  with  a 
proud  sense  of  dignity,  that  must  have  been  very  irritating  to 
the  haughty  princelets  who  looked  down  with  scorn  upon  these 
stout  burghers — men  who  could  so  easily  buy  them  out  in  the 

*  "  History  and  Development  of  Gilds,"  p.  77. 

f  "  History  and  Development  of  Gilds,"  pp.  23,  38. 

\  "  History  and  Development  of  Gilds,"  p.  38. 


1 62  HONOR   GUARDED  BY  LAW, 

market  and  clear  them  out  from  the  tented  field.  An  outward 
sign  of  this  consciousness  of  dignity  we  may  find  in  the  gorgeous 
livery  of  the  great  merchant  companies.  They  cultivated  a 
strong  esprit  de  corps  among  the  members  of  each  guild,  which 
braced  them  against  any  action  that  was  likely  to  bring  discredit 
on  their  body.  They  cherished  a  manly  satisfaction  in  work, 
of  whatever  sort,  that  was  well  and  thoroughly  done.  They 
held  up  before  the  brotherhood,  throughout  their  statutes,  the 
high  ideals  of  honor.  No  one  was  admitted  to  any  trade,  or 
tolerated  in  it,  even  though  it  were  the  lowest,  "  whose  moral 
conduct  and  honor  were  not  stainless."  *  When  one  who  lived 
in  the  country  wished  to  join  a  guild,  some  member  had  to 
pledge  himself  for  his  honor. 

Nor  did  the  guilds  rest  their  endeavor  to  secure  honor  in 
trade  upon  such  fine  tests.  Like  thorough  men  of  business, 
they  tried  to  write  the  law  of  honor  in  their  craft  codes.  The 
guild  statutes  kept  a  watchful  eye  upon  every  temptation  to 
dishonor  in  the  trade  or  craft,  and  provided  clear  and  precise 
directions  concerning  every  possible  point  of  weakness.  No 
member  of  a  craft  guild  was  allowed  to  possess  tools,  "  unless 
the  same  were  testified  to  be  good  and  honest."  f  Special 
enactments  forbade  mixing  inferior  materials  with  a  better  sort, 
or  selling  patched  up  articles  as  new.  Guild  halls  held  the 
standard  of  weights  and  measures,  and  in  the  persons  of  experts 
passed  judgment  upon  all  products.  How  well  such  pains  told, 
is  seen  from  the  fact  that  the  merchants  of  Novgorod,  after 
having  several  times  received  defective  pieces  of  cloth  from 
other  places,  determined  that  no  cloth  but  that  from  the  hall  at 
Bruges  should  be  allowed  entrance  into  the  Baltic  ports  and 
the  Eastern  markets. 

*  "  History  and  Development  of  Gilds,"  p.  65. 
•j-  "  History  and  Development  of  Gilds,"  p.  66. 


PUNISHMENTS  FOR  FRAUD.  163 

Nor  did  the  old-time  guilds  fail  to  enforce  their  rigid  laws 
with  stern,  swift  penalties.  The  punishments  for  minor  offen- 
ces consisted  in  the  payment  of  money  fines  •  or,  in  earlier 
times,  not  having  the  fear  of  our  modern  St.  John  before  their 
eyes,  of  the  payment  of  certain  quantities  of  beer  or  wine,  to 
be  drunk  at  the  guild  feasts.  For  more  serious  offences  more 
serious  pains  were  inflicted,  culminating  in  exclusion  from  the 
guild,  which  carried  with  it  a  loss  of  the  right  to  carry  on  the 
trade  or  craft.  Very  curious  and  suggestive  was  the  craft 
guild's  usage  of  punishment  by  Schelten,  that  is,  reviling  a  re- 
fractory member,  or  declaring  him  infamous.  It  was  a  secular 
excommunication  ;  a  sort  of  moral  boycotting.  It  was  the  last 
punishment  meted  out  to  an  obdurate  offender. 

In  all  this  there  is  very  much,  as  it  seems  to  me,  that  is 
worthy  of  the  serious  study  of  the  merchant  princes  and  mag- 
nates of  industry  of  to-day.  Trade  frauds  are  no  new  inven- 
tion of  the  devil.  We  find  them  as  far  back  in  history  as  we 
can  trace  our  way.  We  have  not  sufficient  data  to  determine 
the  question  whether  we  are  more  or  less  honest  than  our 
fathers — our  fathers  not  being  present  to  testify  on  their  own 
behalf  ;  but  we  may  well  question  whether  we  are  as  much  in 
earnest  and  as  business-like  in  seeking  to  minimize  fraud  and 
dishonor  as  were  the  men  of  the  olden  time.  We  have  been 
apt  pupils  of  the  very  comfortable  gospel  of  laissez-faire,  and 
have  solaced  ourselves  too  easily  for  existing  wrongs,  by  saying 
that  they  can't  be  helped.  Not  so  did  the  worthies  of  the  past 
regard  such  wrongs.  They  seriously  set  themselves  to  the  task 
of  making  commerce  and  trade  and  industry  honest  and  hon- 
orable, and  succeeded  wonderfully  well. 

The  secret  of  their  success  lay  in  the  real  mastership  that 
was  exercised  by  their  guilds,  a  mastership  which  I  have  sought 
to  indicate.  Why  should  not  our  great  Chambers  of  Commerce 


164  WHAT  OUR  EXCHANGES  CAN  DO, 

and  Boards  of  Trade  emulate  this  action  of  the  old-time  guilds? 
Who  that  has  followed  the  story  of  the  atrocious  rascality  pur- 
sued so  perseveringly  by  Mr.  Plimsoll,  the  systematic  murder  of 
seamen  in  unseaworthy  ships.for  the  sake  of  the  insurance,  can 
doubt  that  commerce,  as  carried  on  by  our  English  cousins, 
greatly  needs  the  stern  hand  of  the  ancient  guilds  ?  Is  it  not  a 
burning  shame  upon  the  honorable  merchants  of  the  mother 
land  that  such  things  can  be,  and  the  slow-footed  law  be  left 
to  pursue  and  punish  the  fiends  who  fulfil  the  seer's  dream  of 
Babylon  and  deal  in  the  "  lives  of  men  "  ? 

This  case  of  wrong-doing  is  far  enough  away  not  to  disturb 
our  digestion  to-night.  An  illustration  of  the  way  in  which 
our  great  trade  associations  are  beginning  to  gather  up  again 
the  reins  of  government  may  be  safely  found  much  nearer 
home.  Our  Stock  Exchange  holds  up  the  highest  possible 
code  of  honor  in  contract-keeping,  and  enforces  violation  of 
its  code  by  quick  and  sharp  punishments.  As  a  result,  it  can 
proudly  point  to  the  fact  that,  within  its  realm,  a  word  is  liter- 
ally "  as  good  as  a  bond."  All  the  solemn  and  cumbersome 
ceremonials  which,  as  Mr.  Maine  has  shown  us,  antiquity  felt 
obliged  to  use,  in  order  to  secure  a  bargain,  are  done  away  by 
the  high  sense  of  honor  thus  educated  among  brokers.  A 
leading  broker  of  our  city  told  me  that,  in  his  long  experience, 
he  had  never  known  a  case  where  an  agreement  had  been 
broken,  though  it  had  been  made  on  the  spur  of  the  moment,  at 
the  corner  of  the  street,  without  a  scrap  of  paper  to  evidence 
it,  and  though  its  fulfilment  might  ruin  the  man  who  made  it. 

Could  such  a  proud  record  have  been  possible  but  for  the 
real  government  exercised  byj>ur  Exchange  ?  Only  a  few  days 
ago,  our  papers  recorded  the  unanimous  resolution  of  the 
Board  of  Managers  of  the  Produce  Exchange,  expelling  a 
member  of  the  Exchange  for  dishonorable  business  action.  It 


EXAMPLES  FOR   OUR   ASSOCIATIONS.  165 

is  this  readiness  to  punish,  and  thus  make  real  their  laws  of 
honor,  which  has  made  our  Exchanges  so  successful  in  educat- 
ing the  consciences  of  their  members  in  contract-keeping. 
Might  not  this  good  example  be  carried  much  further  ?  Might 
not  other  forms  of  integrity  come  under  the  culturing  care  of 
our  Exchanges,  and  the  ethical  responsibilities  of  brokerage, 
now  but  slightly  enforced  upon  the  conscience,  be  educated 
higher  ?  Might  not  other  business  associations  ponder  well  this 
good  example,  and  seriously  set  themselves  to  foster  a  sounder 
industry  and  a  purer  trade  ?  Could  not  our  manufacturing  as- 
sociations establish  standards  of  quality  in  materials  and  work- 
manship, as  in  the  old-time  Cloth  Halls,  and  thus  make  a  law 
which  should  be  a  terror  to  the  evil-doer  ;  placing  honesty  and 
honor  at  a  premium,  instead  of  at  a  discount  ? 

I  am  quite  content  to/atf  these  conundrums,  without  waiting 
for  answers. 

III. 

Alike,  in  their  economic  and  moral  features,  there  were, 
then,  as  I  read  the  story  of  the  past,  many  features  of  the  old- 
time  guilds  which  might  profitably  be  studied  by  their  de- 
scendants, the  great  commercial,  trade  and  industrial  associa- 
tions of  our  age. 

Every  thoughtful  man  must  feel  how  much  there  is  in  our 
present  state  of  business  which  is  extremely  unsatisfactory. 
How  sorely  we  need  some  alleviation  of  the  evils  of  the  fierce 
competition  that  is  putting  such  a  fearful  tension  upon  the 
physical,  mental  and  moral  powers  of  manhood  ! 

How  urgently  we  need  some  practical  easing  of  the  strained 
relations  of  capital  and  labor  ;  some  restoration  of  the  old- 
time  cordial  feeling  and  harmonious  interest  between  master 
and  men  ! 


1 66  SOMETHING    THE  MATTER. 

How  imperatively  we  need  some  tonic  that  will  brace  up  the 
enfeebled  sense  of  honor,  whose  dulling  and  relaxing  is  the 
most  alarming  sign  of  the  times,  in  our  land  as  in  every  land 
of  our  western  civilization  !  I  am  not  a  pessimist,  but  a 
thorough-going  optimist.  I  believe  in  human  nature.  I  am 
utterly  heretical  as  to  the  doctrine  of  total  depravity,  even 
when  confronted  by  those  awful  monsters  who  so  scare  our 
country  cousins — our  mighty  bulls  and  bears.  I  believe 
emphatically  in  American  manhood.  It  is  even  now  a  clearly 
cut  type,  of  which  we  may  well  be  proud  ;  and  it  is  only 
getting  out  of  kilts  now.  When  the  "  man-child  glorious,"  of 
whom  Emerson  sang,  is  born  on  this  land,  he  will  be  some- 
thing worth  crossing  the  ocean  to  see.  I  have  not  lived  fifteen 
years  in  New  York  without  learning  a  respect  for  the  splendid 
honor  to  be  found  in  our  Exchanges  and  streets  that  is 
equalled  alone  by  my  admiration  for  the  magnificent  ability 
found  therein.  Behind  any  blackness  which  I  have  drawn,  I 
see  a  great  light  rising,  as  of  a  coming  day.  I  don't  believe 
we  are  going  hopelessly  to  the  bad  ;  but  I  do  believe  in  the 
advice  which  Renan  gave  his  countrymen  at  the  close  of  the 
Franco-Prussian  War — "  Let  us  face  the  facts."  The  facts  in 
our  situation  are  serious  enough  to  make  even  an  optimist 
sober.  There  is  a  position  midway  between  saying  to  a 
patient,  "  You  are  going  to  die,"  and  "  There  is  nothing  the 
matter  with  you." 

Something  is  the  matter  with  us,  economically  and  morally, 
as  everybody  knows.  In  the  presence  of  our  periodically  re- 
curring panics,  our  ever-renewing  "  over-production,"  as  we 
call  it,  our  chronic  constipation  of  commerce,  with  banks  fail- 
ing, mills  closing,  trade  languishing,  industry  stagnating — 
surely  something  is  the  matter.  In  the  presence  of  a  prospect 
of  the  worst  of  civil  wars,  whose  ominous  warnings  we  may 


OUR  INDUSTRIAL  REVOLUTION.  167 

hear  in  the  mutterings  of  Nihilism  and  Socialism — surely  some- 
thing is  the  matter.  In  the  presence  of  the  epidemic  of  fraud 
which  Herbert  Spencer  diagnoses  in  England,,  and  which 
threatens  to  establish  itself  as  endemic  in  our  land — surely 
there  is  something  the  matter. 

What  the  hick-lying  constitutional  disorder  is,  which  is  thus 
seriously  disturbing  the  economic  and  moral  functions  of  the 
business»world,  I  may  not  even  attempt  here  and  now  to  indi- 
cate, if,  indeed,  I  am  rash  enough  to  fancy  that  I  know.  My 
own  belief  is  that  the  disease  is  one  which  will  call  for  heroic 
measures,  unless — and  here  is  my  private  hope — we  can  be 
fortified  so  as  to  outgrow  it  slowly. 

The  most  troubling  feature  about  our  situation  is  that  an 
unprecedented  change  is  going  on  ;  a  change  which  indicates 
a  crisis,  out  of  which  may  come  a  new  and  better  state  of 
health,  but  which  is,  none  the  less,  alarmingly  complicating 
and  intensifying  all  the  evils,  economic  and  moral,  of  our  old 
disorder. 

The  change  that  is  being  wrought  in  all  our  methods  of  in- 
dustry and  trade  and  commerce,  by  the  discoveries  and  inven- 
tions of  our  century,  is  wholly  without  parallel  in  history,  and 
staggers  the  imagination  of  the  boldest  believer  in  progress. 
Steam,  electricity  and  all  the  other  astonishing  factors  that 
are  now  for  the  first  time  introduced  into  the  service  of  man, 
are  revolutionizing  the  world  of  business.  The  change  is 
going  on  so  fast  as  to  almost  take  one's  breath  away.  Busi- 
ness is  becoming  vast  in  its  sweep  and  subtle  and  complex  in 
its  relationship,  beyond  the  power  of  our  old  ideas  and  maxims 
to  grasp. 

Now,  while  here  is  eminently  a  case  where,  as  Mark  Twain 
observed,  "  hindsight  is  easier  than  foresight,"  yet  we  can  see 
something  ahead.  We  can  see  that  the  strain  of  competition 


1 68  REGULATION  NEEDFUL. 

is  destined  to  become  yet  severer  ;  that  the  powers  of  produc- 
tion are  to  be  increased  enormously  ;  that  the  facilities  of 
exchange  are  to  make  the  world  practically  one  market,  twenty- 
four  thousand  miles  long  ;  and  all  this  points  to  the  necessity 
of  our  finding  out  some  practical  plan  of  regulating  produc- 
tion and  exchange,  so  as  to  secure  something  like  an  uniform 
and  a  healthful  flow  of  trade.  No  body,  physical  or  social, 
can  live  that  does  not  develop  a  power  capable  of»co-ordi- 
nating  the  local  activities  of  the  various  parts  of  the  body,  and 
of  regulating  the  flow  of  the  blood,  which  is  the  life  thereof. 
We  can  see  that  wealth  is  to  increasingly  aggregate  in  few 
hands,  as  the  inevitable  result  of  the  natural  tendencies  towards 
a  great  industry  and  a  great  trade  ;  while,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  mass  of  labor  is  increasingly  to  be  drawn  together  in  com- 
pacter  organization,  creating  a  power  of  resistance  equal  to  the 
force  of  its  numbers  and  its  cohesion  ;  and  this  points  to  the 
necessity  of  our  finding  some  means  of  restraining,  on  the  one 
hand,  the  aggressions  of  organized  capital,  and,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  aggressions  of  organized  labor,  and  of  binding  the 
two  equally  indispensable  factors  in  a  real  commonwealth. 
We  can  see  that  business  is  increasingly  to  find,  of  necessity, 
for  some  time  ahead,  the  element  of  uncertainty  entering  into 
every  combination,  with  the  result  of  having  a  gambling  spirit 
fed  in  every  line  of  legitimate  industry  and  trade  and  com- 
merce ;  and  that  this  will  call  for  the  development  of  some 
social  function  capable  of  controlling  and  regulating  this 
necessary  but  most  dangerous  tendency,  which,  unchecked, 
will  utterly  demoralize  business. 

Now,  I  am  not  going  to  get  myself  into  a  box,  and  call  down 
your  laughter  by  exhibiting  my  unfamiliarity  with  "  puts  "  and 
"  calls  "  ;  neither  am  I  going  to  corner  myself  by  explaining 
how  to  do  away  with  "  corners."  I  were  a  fool,  indeed,  to 


COMPETITION    VS.    REGULATION.  169 

rush  in  lightly  where  the  angels  who  fill  our  chairs  of  political 
economy  fear  to  tread.  All  I  aspire  to  do  is  to  point  out  that 
these  three  classes  of  symptoms  seem  to  indicate  one  kind  of 
treatment.  They  all  grow  out  of  the  almost  total  absence  of 
any  regulative  or  co-ordinating  function  in  the  economic  body. 
They  did  not  exist  in  the  days  when  the  old-time  guilds  really 
governed  industry  and  trade  and  commerce. 

Doubtless,  those  guilds  overdid  the  matter  of  governance,  and 
perished  from  the  restraint  which  they  put  upon  free  competi- 
tion. Doubtless,  this  same  free  competition  is  the  most 
serviceable  economic  force  in  our  civilization,  to  be  by  no 
means  lightly  checked,  lest  worse  evils  befall  us.  But,  surely, 
if  there  is  one  thing  settled  in  this  world,  it  is  the  principle 
that  the  very  best,  pushed  to  excess,  becomes  a  bad,  the  worst ; 
that  we  must  guard  and  limit  every  rightful  power,  and  balance 
it  by  its  antipodal  power  ;  that  liberty  itself  must  thus  be 
sphered  in  law,  if  it  is  to  be  kept  from  degenerating  into  license. 
Surely,  we  have  had  enough  of  that  sort  of  free  trade  which 
means  that  every  man  is  free  to  do  just  as  he  pleases,  without 
regard  to  the  interests  or  rights  of  others,  without  concern  for 
the  commonwealth,  without  being  bothered  by  the  fine  notions 
of  other  men  concerning  honesty  and  honor.  Such  free  trade 
is  the  freedom  which  the  body  sets  up  Avhen  every  local  organ 
and  individual  member  goes  to  work  by  itself  and  for  itself,  in 
an  independent  action  of  its  own — the  freedom  of  inflamma- 
tion and  decay,  which  rots  the  body  soon  into  the  grave.  The 
crying  need  of  our  time,  it  seems  to  me,  is  the  balancing  of 
liberty  by  law.  Who  is  to  make  such  law  ?  Not  the  State,  ex- 
cept as  the  last  resort.  The  modern  and  American  instinct  is 
right  on  this  point.  The  State's  hand  is  too  clumsy,  its  sense 
too  dull  to  guide  the  fine  mechanisms  of  industry  and  trade 
and  commerce. 


I/O  A    VISION  OF   THE  FUTURE. 

What  power,  then,  can  essay  this  task  ?  Plainly,  these  great 
industrial  and  trade  and  commercial  associations  which,  obedi- 
ent to  a  sure  instinct  of  the  body  social,  have  been  developing 
in  our  century,  one  after  another  ;  which  are,  under  the  same 
instinct,  already  assuming  one  function  after  another  of  a  real 
government.  Why  should  not  such  Boards  and  Chambers 
seriously  set  themselves  to  the  study  of  these  economic  and 
ethical  problems,  a..d  at  least  try  to  take  some  steps  towards  a 
sounder  state  of  society  ?  . 

But  it  is  my  purpose  merely  to  suggest.  One  of  the  curious 
features  of  civilization  is  the  return  of  society  upon  itself — the 
taking  up  anew  of  customs  and  institutions  which  had  been 
discarded.  Excess  has  led  to  a  too  sweeping  abolition,  and 
then  the  loss  of  a  real  good  has  made  itself  felt,  and  the  chil- 
dren have  gone  back  to  the  experience  of  their  fathers,  to  pick 
up  its  golden  treasures.  We  move  upwards  in  a  cycle.  Even 
our  wonderful  nineteenth  century  might,  perhaps,  thus  go  back 
to  the  old-time  guilds,  and  seek  a  restoration,  not  of  their  ad- 
mitted defects  and  evils,  but  of  their  proven  merits. 

As  I  look  down  the  vista  of  a  century,  I  see  upon  our  shores 
a  nation  of  200,000,000  people,  and,  as  its  throbbing  heart,  a 
city  of  5,000,000,  where  once  stood  the  little  town  in  which  we 
are  met  to-night.  I  see,  in  this  city  of  the  future,  the  centre 
of  the  nation's  manufactures,  the  mart  of  a  continent's  trade, 
the  seat  of  the  world's  commerce,  the  clearing-house  of  all 
nations  ;  a  city  of  merchant  princes  and  kings  of  industry, 
glorious  beyond  our  dreams  in  all  the  treasures  of  architecture 
and  art ;  the  mighty  brain  of  a  civilization  ordered  into 
"  A  parliament  of  man,  a  federation  of  the  world  "  ;  wherein 
"The  war-drum  throbs  no  longer,  and  the  battle-flags  are 
furled." 

And,  looking  upon  this  proud  vision,  I  see,  as  the  nerve- 


THE   COMING  CITY.  I /I 

centres  of  this  wonderful  social  organism,  vast  commercial, 
trade  and  industrial  associations,  which  have  developed  a  mar- 
vellous mechanism  of  exchange,  such  as  the  world  had  never 
dreamed  of,  and  at  the  same  time  have  developed  powers 
of  self-government  such  as  were  typed,  as  in  the  germ,  in  the 
guilds  of  yore.  And  thus,  upon  the  men  of  the  new  and 
greater  Venice,  I  see  such  high  and  noble  faces  as  those  which 
Art  has  preserved  from  the  days  of  the  merchant  rulers  of  the 
beautiful  City  of  the  Adriatic  ;  faces  as  of  the  kings  who  have 
brought  order  out  of  the  chaos  of  business,  perennial,  prosper- 
ous peace  out  of  its  chronic  strife,  a  real  commonwealth  out  of 
its  persistent  pursuit  of  private  property  ;  kings  who  have 
throned,  over  all  mere  natural  laws  of  the  market,  the  ever- 
lasting laws  of  justice  and  right,  of  truth  and  honesty  and 
honor,  that  were  proclaimed  of  old  upon  the  Mount. 

And  now,  Mr.  Chairman,  I  am  satisfied  that  my  speech  has 
accomplished  at  least  one  result.  If  any  gentlemen  here 
cherished  the  notion  that  a  parson  could  be  made  to  speak, 
even  to  a  toast,  without  preaching,  they  have  probably  had  that 
illusion  pretty  well  dispelled  by  this  time.  Their  judgment 
will  probably  be  about  the  same  as  that  which  was  passed  lately 
upon  a  certain  sermon.  A.,  passing  a  church,  met  B.  coming 
down  the  steps,  and  greeted  him  with  a  "  Well,  old  fellow  ! 
what  sort  of  a  sermon  have  you  had  ?  "  To  which  B.  replied  : 
"  The  sermon  was  well  enough,  if  it  had  n't  been  for  the  awful 
rot  of  duties  tagged  on  to  it !  " 


VI. 

THE  PREVENTION  OF  INTEMPERANCE. 


173 


OUTLINE. 

1.  Our  early  temperance  movement  empiric — (i)  Inadequate  physiologi- 
cal grounds  for  teetotalism — -(2)  Illogical  moral  arguments  for  teetotalism — 
(3)  Mistaken  appeals  to  legislation — Prohibition  a  failure  in  Maine — Do.  in 
Massachusetts — Do.  in  Rhode  Island — (4)  The  temperance  movement  of  the 
future  should  conserve  whatever  was  valuable  in  the  early  movement — True 
moral  grounds  for  total  abstinence — True  services  of  legislation. 

2.  Correct  methods  for  preventing  drunkenness  to  be  found  in  a  knowl- 
edge of  the  conditions  gendering  excess  in  drink — (i)  Massachusetts  laid 
the  foundation  for  this  knowledge — The  cosmic  law  of  temperance — Influ- 
ences of  climate — Nature's  provision  for  this  need  in  light  wines — England's 
experiment   non-conclusive — Sensible  stimulation — Influences  of  heredity 
— Nature's  provision  for  counteracting  them — Practical  measures  in  these 
directions — (2)  Climate  and  race  laws  exaggerated  by  social  conditions — 
Good-fellowship — Social  customs — Public    sentiment   as  to  drunkenness — 
(3)  Instinct  of  stimulation  as  a  physical  craving  exaggerated  by  many  con- 
ditions of  our  life — The  intensity  of  our  national  character — Bad  cuisine — 
Overcrowding   o"f  tenements  and  factories — Preventive  medicine  holds  the 
key  to  this  aspect  of   the  problem — Remedial   measures — (4)  Instinct  of 
stimulation  as  a  craving  of  the  intellectual  and  emotional  nature  exagger- 
ated by  the  average  morale  of  our  people — Dull  life  seeks  joy — Drunk  with 
wine  versus  rilled  with  the  spirit — This  mental  poverty  the  peculiar  mis- 
fortune of  the  poor — Practical  measures. 

3.  The  true  cure  as  slow  as  education — Progress  none  the  less  discerni- 
ble— What  the  temperance  movement  has  wrought — Wherein  it  has  stood 
in  its  own  way — The  wiser  temperance  movement  of  the  future. 


174 


THE  PREVENTION  OF  INTEMPERANCE.* 


There  is  a  special  appropriateness  in  the  consideration  of 
the  great  social  problem  before  us  at  this  time,  when  on  every 
hand  there  are  tokens  of  a  revival  of  interest  in  the  temperance 
movement,  and  in  this  city,  the  capital  of  the  commonwealth 
which  has  done  more  by  experiment  and  research  towards  its  so- 
lution than  any  State  in  the  Union.  Any  appearance  of  dogma- 
tism in  my  language  must  be  judged  in  the  light  of  the  necessity 
of  a  condensation  which  precludes  illustration  or  verification. 

I. 

As  in  every  similar  study,  our  approach  to  the  true  solution 
of  the  problem  of  intemperance  lies  through  the  debris  of  mis- 
taken theories  and  experiments.  The  early  essays  of  preven- 
tive philanthropy  are  generally  crude — begotten  of  enthusiasm 
rather  than  of  scientific  inquiry.  Zeal  is  naturally  empiric  ; 
its  therapeutics — "Morrison's  pills."  Poor  humanity's  every 
ailment  has  to  be  well  plied  with  drastic  treatment  before 
rational  measures  have  a  chance. 

As  a  preventive  philanthropy,  the  temperance  movement, 
thus  far,  has  acted  empirically.  Its  aim  has  been  to  stop 

*  Address  at  the  Church  Congress,  Boston,  November,  1876. 
175 


FALSE  PHYSIOLOGY. 

drunkenness  by  stopping  drinking  ;  its  philosophy  of  preven- 
tion— persuading  or  compelling  men  to  total  abstinence.  Cer- 
tainly, if  this  could  be  accomplished,  it  would  dry  up  the 
source  of  drunkenness.  But  what  a  herculean  labor !  A 
usage  growing  out  of  an  instinct  to  stimulation,  world-old, 
world-wide,  is  to  be  served  with  an  immediate  "  dispossess  "  ! 
On  what  grounds  could  temperance  reformers  warrant  this 
summons  of  ejection  ? 

(i)  They  essayed  to  authorize  this  demand  on  physiological 
grounds  that  are  familiar  to  us  all.  Alcohol  was  declared  to 
stimulate  only  as  the  whip  spurred  to  action,  entailing  corre- 
sponding reaction  ;  to  be  no  food — supplying  no  element  of 
nutrition,  being  never  assimilated,  but  rejected  "  totally  and 
naturally,"  retarding  digestion  ;  and  so  on  through  a  round  of 
charges,  which  concluded  with  the  assertion  that  it  was,  in  all 
degrees  and  forms,  an  essential  poison. 

While  the  physiological  action  of  alcohol  remains  still  in 
much  obscurity,  it  is,  I  believe,  not  debatable  that  the  careful 
investigations  of  Dr.  Anstie  and  others  have  disproven  the  chief 
statements  of  teetotalism  on  this  subject ;  that  they  have  shown 
that  alcohol  is  not  ejected  unassimilated  from  the  body  to  any 
appreciable  extent ;  that  it  does  come  under  the  category  of 
food  as  a  force-supplier  ;  that  it  acts  very  differently  in  different 
doses,  as  do  other  substances,  so  that  it  may  really  be  a  food  in 
moderation,  and  yet  a  poison  in  excess  ;  that  in  disease  it  is 
often  positively  useful,  and  for  dietetic  purposes,  when  used 
properly,  /'.  e.y  in  the  form  of  light  wines,  to  the  extent  of  a 
moderation  which  is  scientifically  definable,  is  not  proven  to 
act  otherwise  than  as  the  consensus  of  experience  has  claimed. 
Teetotalism  has  thus  far  failed  to  make  out  its  case.  Nor 
would  it  seem  to  be  likely  ever  to  persuade  men  of  the  abso- 
lute harmfulness  of  alcohol  while  mother  nature  is  at  pains  to 


DEFECTIVE  MORAL  BUTTRESSES.  I// 

smuggle  this  ingredient  into  the  system  in  the  commonest 
food — every  loaf  of  bread  liberating  in  the  body  a  certain 
amount  of  alcohol,  produced  in  the  fermentation  of  the  flour, 
thus  rendering  total  abstinence  an  impossibility. 

(2)  Teetotalism  has  not  been  more  successful  in  its  moral 
buttressing.     Tracing  intemperance  back  no  farther  than  the 
habit  giving  rise  to  the  excess,  it  charged  the  responsibility  of 
drunkenness  upon  moderate  drinkers,  and  pronounced  all  use 
of  alcoholic  liquors,  socially  or  dietetically,  sinful  per  se.     This 
charge,   resting  on  the  assumed  physiological  noxiousness  of 
alcohol,  in  the  absence  of  the  fact,  became  a  charge  of  powder, 
fulminating  resonantly  but  wholly  imponderable.      If  alcohol 
fulfils  any  function  in  the  economy,  its  proper  employment  is 
a  use,  and  as  such  in  no  way  responsible  for  its  abuse.     Com- 
mon sense  discerned  in  the  hyper-spirituality  of  this  asceticism 
an  impugning  of  the  purity  of  nature,  the  justice  of  Providence, 
the  authority  of  Scripture,  and  the  example  of  Christ  ;  and  con- 
servative religion  drew  back  from  the  movement.     It  was,  ere- 
long, felt  to  be  practically  impossible  to  commit  society  to  a 
total  disuse  of  alcoholic  stimulants. 

(3)  Temperance  reformers  then  began  to  call  in  the  aid  of 
the  law.     License  laws  were  resorted  to,  with  a  view  of  gradu- 
ally restricting  the  traffic  in  alcoholic  drinks.     They  failed  to 
realize  the  expectations  of  enthusiasts.     Zeal's  inconsequent 
logic  reasoned  that,  since  the  law  could  not  sufficiently  check 
the  traffic,  it  should  suppress  it.     The  State  should  prohibit  it. 
The  fact  of  this  new  departure  showed  a  strange  ignorance  of 
history  ;  the  grounds  on  which  it  was  based  betrayed  an  entire 
misconception  of  the  function  of  legislation  in  the  sphere  of 
morals,  of  the  powers  and  responsibilities  of  the  State  in  refer- 
ence to  social  evils,  of  the  nature  of  morality  itself — the  essen- 
tial worth  of  virtue.     A  dispassionate  and  careful  study  of  the 


i;8  MAINE  LAW  A   FAILURE. 

experiment  convinces  me  that  it  has  vindicated  the  anticipa- 
tions of  its  opponents  ;  that  it  has  realized  the  expectations  of 
its  friends  only  as  they  have  attributed  to  it  the  merit  really 
due  to  other  forces  ;  that  its  success  has  been  in  an  inverse 
ratio  to  its  need — small  and  temperate  communities  finding  it 
helpful,  large  cities  and  intemperate  towns  finding  it  next  to  use- 
less ;  that,  therefore,  as  a  preventive  method,  it  has  been  a 
practical  failure. 

Maine,  which  for  twenty-five  years  has  had  a  prohibitory  law 
upon  its  statute-book,  is  appealed  to  in  evidence  of  its  effi- 
ciency. If  all  that  is  claimed  were  proven,  it  would  not  follow 
that  the  Maine  law  held  the  secret  of  this  social  evil.  Maine 
has  always  been  relatively  a  sober  State,  having  a  homogeneous 
population,  in  small  communities,  occupied  in  out-door  pur- 
suits. The  conditions  of  the  problem  are  radically  different 
there  from  the  conditions  of  the  problem  in  the  States  where 
this  evil  presses  most  heavily.  But  the  exact  value  of  the 
Maine  law  is  not  clear.  Of  official  testimony  there  is  next  to 
nothing.  Police  statistics  are  notoriously  unreliable  on  this 
subject.  Revenue  statistics,  quoted  to  show  a  decreased  con- 
sumption of  liquor,  overlook  the  fact  that  illicit  distil- 
lation, always  increasing  proportionately  to  the  stringency  of 
the  restraint  on  legal  manufacture,  does  not  usually  make  re- 
turns to  government.  Of  voluntary  testimony  there  is  abun- 
dance, but  it  is  general — the  value  of  which  lawyers  appreciate  ; 
and  it  is  open  to  a  suspicion  of  the  "  coercion  of  public  opin- 
ion," known  to  be  strong  in  that  State.  When  all  the  evi- 
dence proffered  is  sifted,  it  appears  that  through  a  consider- 
able part  of  the  State  the  open  traffic  has  been  closed,  though 
in  a  large  part  of  the  State  even  this  has  not  been  accomplished  ; 
while,  where  this  sale  has  been  suppressed,  a  secret  traffic  has  run 
along  below  the  surface,  at  no  inconvenient  depth  for  divers. 


MASSACHUSETTS  EXPERIMENT.  179 

The  actual  extent  of  drunkenness  remaining  is  not  easily  ascer- 
tainable.  It  may  be  admitted  that  it  has  decreased,  but  official 
documents  show  the  credit  of  this  diminution  to  be  due,  not  to 
the  law,  but  to  the  backlying  public  sentiment.  The  law  has 
been  operative  intermittently  and  locally,  just  as  it  has  ex- 
pressed the  sense  of  a  community. 

Massachusetts  presents  us  with  an  immense  mass  of  testi- 
mony as  to  the  workings  of  the  repeated  essays  in  prohibition 
— the  testimony  of  leading  citizens,  officially  drawn  forth,  and 
thoroughly  sifted  by  cross-examination.  Any  one  carefully 
reading  and  analyzing  that  testimony,  as  laid  before  the  Legis- 
lative Commission  of  1867,  and  not  agreeing  with  the  report 
of  the  committee  that  prohibition  has  been  a  practical  failure, 
ought  to  have  his  head  examined  by  a  phrenologist.  Such  an 
analysis  shows  that  in  the  great  cities  the  law  was  still-born  ; 
that  in  the  large  towns,  with  a  few  exceptions,  it  never  gained 
more  than  a  spasmodic  vitality  ;  that  where  it  did  succeed  for 
any  time  in  closing  the  outward  traffic,  there  sprang  up  a  secret 
trade  under  various  forms  ;  that  this  illicit  traffic  dealt  in  worse 
liquors,  and,  by  the  circumstances  of  its  carrying  on,  stimu- 
lated excessive  drinking — the  very  poor  even  setting  up  pri- 
vate stills  in  tenements,  if  only  in  the  primitive  form  of  a  tea- 
kettle and  a  jug  of  molasses  ;  with  a  net  result  of  undiminished 
drunkenness,  if  not  of  a  positive  addition  to  the  aggregate  of 
intemperance — intemperence  notably  increasing  among  the 
women  and  children  of  the  poor  ;  that,  where  the  law  had  an 
apparent  success,  in  almost  every  instance  there  had  previously 
been  such  a  strong  local  sentiment  as  had  made  the  license 
laws  practically  prohibitive  ;  that  prohibition  drew  after  it  the 
usual  result  of  all  attempts  to  coerce  virtue — social  demorali- 
zation ;  that  it  reacted  upon  the  temperance  cause  most  injuri- 
ously, discharging  moral  effort,  dividing  friends,  cohering  the 


ISO  PROHIBITION  DOES  NOT  PROHIBIT. 

liquor  interests,  alienating  the  cultured  classes,  relaxing  social 
sentiment  and  usage/  setting  the  whole  movement  back  to  the 
point  where  it  stands  to-day  ;  in  brief,  that  the  law,  when 
voicing  the  communal  conscience,  had  the  power  to  bless 
which  that  force  always  exerts,  but  when  failing  to  express  any 
such  communal  conscience,  had  power  only  to  curse  ;  that  the 
real  power  was  shown  to  be  public  opinion,  and  not  legislation. 

Rhode  Island,  through  an  official  inquiry  instituted  by  Gov- 
ernor Howard,  corroborates  the  experience  of  Maine  and  Mas- 
sachusetts. No  other  States  offer  official  material  for  investi- 
gation. Making,  then,  every  fair  allowance  asked  by  the 
friends  of  prohibition,  it  must  be  said  that  the  attempt  to  enforce 
a  compulsory  teetotalism,  and  thus  stop  drunkenness  by  stop- 
ping drinking,  has  been  the  failure  with  us  which  it  has  been  else- 
where. Prohibition  does  not  prohibit. 

If  the  second  great  wave  of  temperance  agitation  follows  the 
line  of  the  first  wave  it  will  land  us  little  nearer  to  national 
sobriety.  The  moral  forces  which  our  renewed  movement  rouses 
will  tell  upon  the  land,  as  the  forces  of  the  early  movement 
told,  mightily  ;  but  they  will  be  largely  frittered  away  in  impos- 
sible schemes,  as  they  were  thus  frittered  away  by  our  fathers. 

(4)  In  the  wiser  work  of  the  future,  whatever  there  was  of 
value  in  these  early  essays  will  be  conserved. 

Total  abstinence  may  continue  to  be  preached,  as  the  gospel 
of  salvation  for  hosts  of  men,  who,  whether  from  physical  pre- 
dispositions or  from  weakness  of  will,  find  the  poise  of  moder- 
ation impossible.  The  wisest  of  temperance  societies,  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church,  holds  up  moderation  as  the  norm,  but 
counsels,  for  those  who  show- themselves  incapable  of  it,  total 
abstinence.  Entire  abstention  may  perhaps  be  laid  upon  the 
consciences  of  those  who  do  not  need  it,  for  the  sake  of  those 
who  are  weak,  if  that  can  be  shown  needful  and  wise. 


WHAT  LAW  CAN  DO.  l8l 

Legislation  must  still  be  looked  to  for  valuable  aid.  Though 
men  are  not  to  be  made  sober  by  act  of  Parliament,  they  may 
be  helped  by  laws  in  making  themselves  sober.  The  law  can- 
not lead  public  sentiment,  but  it  can  closely  follow  it.  Legis- 
lation will  never  be  the  driving-wheel  of  reform,  but  it 
should  be  the  ratchet-wheel,  holding  every  advance.  It  can 
pronounce  drunkenness  a  crime,  can  punish  it  by  imprison- 
ment, and  on  repetition,  perhaps,  by  forfeiture  of  civil  rights. 
It  can  recognize  inebriety,  the  mania  for  drink,  as  a  disease, 
and  insist  upon  its  being  placed  under  curative  treatment.  It 
can  consider  the  effect  of  tariffs  on  light  wines  upon  the  habits 
of  the  people.  It  can  refuse  to  admit  drunkenness  as  a  plea 
in  defence  of  crime.  It  can  restrain  the  traffic  in  liquor  and 
guard  its  purity  ;  and,  as  public  sentiment  backs  it,  gradually 
constrict  the  trade  till  local  prohibition  is  reached — if  that  be 
the  legitimate  goal  of  reform.  The  local  option  of  prohibiting 
the  trade  of  grog-shops  and  tippling-places  should  be  made  the 
privilege  of  every  community,  upon  such  a  decided  expression 
of  opinion  as  Sir  Wilfrid  Lawson  requires  in  his  Permissive 
Bill — a  two-thirds  vote.  Temperance  reformers,  instead  of 
seeking  ideal  laws,  should  concern  themselves  with  vitalizing 
whatever  laws  exist,  and  thus  lead  on  to  greater  stringency  of 
legislation. 

When  the  minds  of  temperance  reformers  are  turned  from 
the  illusive  hopes  still  alluring  them  astray,  some  such  combi- 
nation of  philanthropy  and  legislation  as  that  which  has  been 
effected  in  Gothenburg,  Sweden,  might  be  put  into  operation 
in  many  localities,  with  equally  good  results.  Gothenburg — 
of  which  a  clergyman  in  the  Church  Congress  at  Bath  said,  "  I 
never  in  my  life  saw  such  scenes  of  drunkenness  " —  has  been 
transformed  into  a  sober  community,  by  a  most  simple  system. 
The  number  of  public  houses  in  a  given  district,  the  days  and 


1 82  COSMIC  LA  IV  OF   TEMPERANCE. 

hours  on  which  they  may  be  open,  the  conditions  under  which 
they  are  to  sell  liquors,  are  all  fixed  by  state  law  ;  and  the 
privilege  of  carrying  them  on  is  disposed  of  at  a  public  auc- 
tion. An  association  of  the  friends  of  temperance  buy  in  the 
privilege,  and  keep  these  houses  in  their  own  hands.  Pure 
liquors  alone  are  sold,  with  tea  and  coffee.  The  rooms  are 
made  attractive  ;  games,  papers,  etc.,  are  furnished  the  guests, 
and  every  effort  is  made  to  render  the  places  social  family 
resorts.  The  counters  are  not  covered  with  pretzels  and  other 
provocatives  of  thirst  ;  and  the  man  who  shows  signs  of  having 
had  enough  is  not  allowed  to  get  more  at  that  time.  The  net 
profits  are  expended  in  works  of  charity.  By  merely  changing 
the  conditions  under  which  drink  is  taken,  a  social  transfor- 
mation has  been  wrought. 

This  is  a  hint  of  the  practical  methods  of  utilizing  law  open 
to  our  temperance  societies,  when  they  cease  to  construct 
Utopias  and  set  at  work  to  better  the  actual  world. 

II. 

The  true  methods  of  preventing  drunkenness  are  to  be 
sought  in  a  knowledge  of  the  conditions  gendering  excess  in 
the  use  of  alcoholic  stimulants. 

(i)  To  Massachusetts  we  are  indebted,  through  her  admi- 
rable State  Board  of  Health,  for  the  scientific  foundation  of  the 
etiology  of  drunkenness.  A  wide  correspondence,  conducted 
under  exceptionally  favorable  circumstances,  yielded  an  elab- 
orate collection  of  facts  as  to  the  relative  intemperance  of 
different  nations,  which  led-to  the  brilliant  generalization  of 
Dr.  Bowditch,  named  by  him  the  Cosmic  Law  of  Temperance. 
It  was  shown  that  the  tendency  to  drunkenness  increases  as  we 
go  from  the  equator,  the  intemperate  countries  of  Europe 


CLIMATE   SUGGESTS    TREATMENT.  183 

being  the  northern  nations.  The  explanation  of  this  was  found 
in  the  effect  of  climate,  which  intensifies  in  cold  regions  the 
instinct  to  stimulation.  The  apparent  exceptions  to  this  cli- 
matic classification  indicate  the  working  of  another  physical 
law — heredity  ;  some  races  being  predisposed  to  excess  in 
drinking.  Climatic  conditions  and  race  idiosyncrasies  were 
shown  to  largely  determine  the  habits  of  a  people  with  respect 
to  sobriety. 

A  short  and  easy  cure  for  this  social  disorder  must,  there 
fore,  be  quackery.     It  is  a  case  for  slow  alteratives. 

(a)  We  cannot  change  our  climate,  but  we  can  accept  its 
necessities,  and  look  to  nature  to  modify  the  evils  which  nature 
works.  The  craving  for  stimulation  must  be  acknowledged  as 
a  real  physical  instinct,  not  to  be  banned,  and  thus  driven  to 
license  of  revolt,  but  to  be  guided  into  safe  satisfaction.  This 
same  inquiry  of  the  Massachusetts  Board  of  Health  indicated 
nature's  provision  for  supplying  this  want,  consistently  with 
sobriety. 

Through  the  region  chiefly  occupied  by  civilization — the 
temperate  zones — the  vine  is  a  native  growth.  Where  this  pro- 
vision is  utilized,  in  the  habitual  use  of  light  native  wines,  it 
was  shown  that  drunkenness  is  scarcely  known  as  a  social  evil. 
When  intoxication  is  found  to  any  serious  extent  in  these  coun- 
tries, it  is  discovered  to  be  from  the  use  of  ardent  spirits  ;  and 
that  use  may  nearly  always  be  traced  up  to  exceptional  physi- 
cal or  social  causes.  It  is  undeniable  that,  upon  the  whole, 
temperance  does  characterize  the  light- wine  drinking  countries, 
and  for  patent  reasons.  These  wines  do  not  inflame  thirst,  are 
but  slightly  intoxicating,  and  produce,  generally,  satiety  before 
narcotism  is  reached. 

Of  course,  it  is  difficult  to  reason  safely  from  the  habits  of 
one  people  to  those  of  another.  Because  temperate  races,  ac- 


1 84  LIGHT    WINES    fS.    LIQUORS. 

customed  to  light  wines,  use  them  freely  with  moderation,  it 
does  not  follow  that  races  prone  to  excess,  accustomed  to  dis- 
tilled liquors,  would  be  restored  to  temperance  by  the  introduc- 
tion to  common  use  of  native  wines.  But,  at  least,  it  is  demon- 
strable that  some  peoples  who  have  become  grossly  intemperate, 
through  the  use  of  ardent  liquors,  have  been  successfully  con- 
verted to  sobriety  by  the  wise  efforts  of  temperance  societies  in 
making  good  light  wines  cheap. 

It  is  said  that  such  an  experiment  failed  in  England  The 
Beer  Bill,  which  was  passed  as  a  temperance  measure,  while  it 
rendered  good  beer  cheap,  certainly  did  fail  of  promoting 
sobriety,  and  was  repealed  shortly.  But  the  experiment  was 
seriously  defective.  The  English  peasantry  are  notoriously  de- 
graded, are  hard  worked,  poorly  paid,  badly  fed  and  housed. 
The  English  beer  is  the  heaviest  beer  known.  The  ale- 
houses stimulated  drinking.  Almost  every  condition  was  un- 
favorable. The  workingmen's  clubs  in  the  same  country  have, 
in  numerous  instances  of  late,  introduced  beer  to  the  club- 
rooms,  and  with  most  happy  effect,  not  only  not  making  drunk- 
ards but  actually  reclaiming  the  intemperate. 

Had  our  forefathers  cultivated  the  vine,  and  started  the 
nation  in  the  use  of  native  light  wines,  there  is  no  rational 
doubt  that,  despite  of  all  our  unfavorable  conditions,  we  should 
have  been  a  vastly  more  temperate  people  than  we  are  to-day. 
The  first  effects  of  their  introduction,  now,  may  be  adverse  to 
sobriety,  as  seems  to  be  the  case  in  certain  sections  ;  but  slowly 
a  purer  taste  may  form,  and  a  generation  grow  up  accustomed 
to  their  free  use,  and  trained  in  the  moderation  which  they 
foster.  The  experiment  is  certainly  before  us,  and  we  may  re- 
gard it  hopefully. 

To  the  extent  that  good  tea  and  coffee  can  be  made  the 
popular  beverages,  we  may  wean  our  people  from  stronger 


HEREDITY    WORKS  BOTH    WAYS.  185 

stimulants.  New  England's  abstinence  from  wines  is  undoubt- 
edly due  largely  to  her  almost  intemperate  use  of  tea  and  cof- 
fee— to  say  nothing  of  cider. 

Holly-tree  inns  and  temperance  coffee-houses  are  following 
nature's  line — acknowledging  the  craving  for  stimulation,  and 
supplying  it  safely. 

(£)  In  so  far  as  our  national  drunkenness  results  primarily 
from  the  law  of  heredity — race-instincts  to  excessive  indul- 
gence coming  down  to  us  with  the  increments  of  successive 
generations — the  problem  again  assumes  a  most  tremendous 
character.  Our  English  and  Irish  and  Scotch  blood  bequeath 
us  a  heritage  whose  income  is  the  American  drunkenness. 

But  nature's  forces  are  working  this  same  law  of  heredity  to 
our  relief.  The  aggravated  type  of  drunkenness,  inebriety — the 
disease,  the  mania — as  a  report  of  the  Massachusetts  State 
Board  of  Charities  tells  us,  wipes  out  a  family  in  about  four 
generations.  Nature's  process  of  the  "  survival  of  the  fittest " 
works  toward  a  better  race-stock. 

The  treatment  which  is  pursued  in  our  inebriate  asylums,  if 
persevered  in,  may  in  a  few  generations  eliminate  this  taint 
from  a  family.  This  natural  alterative  of  inebriety  is  only 
being  put  into  use  in  this  generation.  What  may  it  not  work 
in  time  ? 

Dr.  Beard,  who  presents  this  view,  says  that  if  it  be  sound, 
"  the  problem  of  inebriety  is  being  slowly  solved  for  us  by 
forces  in  comparison  with  which  all  our  organizations  are  but 
as  the  foam  on  the  surface  of  the  ocean-tide." 

In  its  milder  form,  drunkenness,  as  a  vice  rather  than  a 
mania,  still  betrays  its  hereditariness.  The  original  capital  of 
fleshly  appetite  in  Adam — "the  primal  bio-plasmic  germ  cell," 
as  we  now  translate  the  Hebrew  nomenclature — comes  down  to 
us  with  the  accumulated  interest  of  untold  generations.  The 


1 86  EDUCATION   THE   SPECIFIC. 

orgies  of  our  ancestry,  savage  and  semi-civilized,  stir  still  in 
our  blood.  What  a  stupendous  force  of  habit  moves  behind 
this  lust  of  drink  ! 

We  are  only  beginning  to  stem  this  stream  of  tendency. 
Only  within  our  generation  has  temperance  become  a  virtue 
enjoined  by  society. 

Our  hope*  must  lie  in  the  slow  formation,  through  successive 
generations,  of  a  better  stock,  educated  into  temperance.  Here 
also  nature  may  work  for  us — good  as  well  as  evil  growing  at 
compound  interest,  only  with  no  limitations  to  its  develop- 
ments. Much  of  the  best  work  of  the  temperance  reform  has 
fallen  into  line  with  nature  herein,  and  this  the  Church  must 
re-inforce  heartily.  Every  individual  rescued  to  sobriety  adds 
one  of  the  social  cells  through  whose  organic  action  there  is 
builded  up  a  better  human  stock  ;  checks  the  tides  flowing 
through  his  veins  toward  drunkenness,  and  makes  it  easier 
for  his  children  to  resist  them. 

We  must  go  back  to  childhood,  before  the  inherited  instinct 
develops  into  habits  of  indulgence,  and  start  the  generations 
aright.  Home-training  must  become  neither  the  asceticism 
which  surrounds  wine  with  the  attractions  of  the  forbidden,  nor 
the  licence  which  allows  early  indulgence,  but  the  wisdom 
which  accustoms  to  the  true  use,  while  warning  of  the  dangers 
of  abuse,  and  makes  wine,  as  the  great  Grecian  called  it,  "the 
test  of  youth's  self  control  "  ;  and  thus  it  must  rear  the  young 
in  that  manly  temperance  set  before  them  as  the  zone  of  all  the 
virtues. 

The  Church  must  supplement  this  home-training,  or  provide 
for  its  lack,  through  her  Sunday-schools,  through  her  parish 
schools,  and  perhaps  through  children's  societies  ;  inculcating 
and  inspiring  the  duty  of  keeping  the  body  in  temperance, 
soberness  and  chastity.  The  State  must  do  likewise,  unless 


SOCIAL    CUSTOMS  FOSTER  EXCESS.  l8/ 

she  thinks  to  rear  manhood  fit  for  citizenship  by  information 
without  culture,  by  knowledge  without  character.  Thus 
seeking  to  counteract  race-tendencies  toward  drunkenness 
by  the  law  of  heredity,  it  will  soon  be  perceived  that  this 
reform  is  but  a  segment  of  the  whole  social  reformation  ; 
that  the  basic  reform  lies  back  of  all  society  programmes, 
in  the  primal  institute  of  humanity  ;  that  what  Sweden- 
borg  called  "  the  seminary  of  the  race  "  is  the  beginning  of 
the  better  order  ;  that  the  regeneration  of  society  is  to  come 
through  the  development  of  a  nobler  human  stock  ;  that  what 
science  now  calls  stirpiculture  is  but  the  Church's  consciousness 
of  her  mission  in  the  world — the  organic  evolution  of  a  regener- 
ated humanity. 

(2)  The  unfavorable  action  of  climate  and  race  laws  upon 
drinking  habits  is  intensified  by  other  conditions  of  our  life. 
The  convivial  use  of  alcoholic  liquors  is  fostered  into  excess  by 
our  social  customs  and  sentiments. 

A  large  share  of  the  drinking  indulged  in,  by  the  young 
especially,  is  prompted  more  by  good  fellowship  than  by  actual 
appetite.  It  rests,  therefore,  with  society  not  to  tempt  men  to 
excess  by  its  usages,  nor  encourage  them  in  such  excess  by  its 
spirit.  Instead  of  which,  our  customs  stimulate  intemperate- 
ness,  and  our  code  of  honor  fails  sufficiently  to  shame  it.  Our 
formal  dinner-tables  are  covered  with  various  kinds  of  wines — 
always  more  dangerous  than  the  same  quantity  of  one  variety. 
Our  receptions  set  private  bars  in  side  rooms.  The  final  scene 
of  our  balls  presents  the  corners  and  by-places  filled  with 
young  men  and  champagne-bottles.  Humanity,  without  asking 
the  prohibition  of  wine  from  social  festivities,  may  demand 
that  temperance  shall  not  blush  over  our  tables  and  be  shamed 
in  our  dining-rooms.  Society  should  frown,  as  women  can 
cause  it  to  do,  on  hilarious  indulgence.  Physicians  and  clergy- 


1 88  SOCIAL   SENTIMENT   UTILIZED. 

men,  the  custodians  of  health  and  morals,  should  decline  to 
grace  occasions  where  fellowship  degenerates  into  license.  In- 
temperance should  be  made  an  offence  worse  in  the  social  code 
than  a  wrong — a  vulgarity.  Custom  should  not  ordain  that 
hospitality  must  proffer  the  glass  to  the  guest,  unless  of  known 
sobriety,  nor  that  the  guest  should  feel  constrained  to  accept 
the  invitation. 

A  great  advance  has  been  made  in  these  respects,  which 
needs  to  be  pushed  still  further.  Women  ought  in  every  way 
to  discourage  the  social  usages  which  tempt  men  to  excess. 
The  pernicious  American  customs  of  "  tippling  "  and  of 
"treating"  are  responsible  for' very  much  of  our  drunken- 
ness. Liquor  taken  on  an  empty  stomach  is  peculiarly  danger- 
ous. Few  men  indulge  to  excess  over  meals.  But  occasional 
dram-taking  through  the  day  leads  men  into  excess  uncon- 
sciously ;  while  the  fiery  potion  inflames  the  empty  stomach  and 
genders  the  diseased  craving  which  leads  on  to  inebriety. 
Friendship  is  thus  prostitued  to  the  demon  of  drunkenness. 
Out  of  these  habits  has  grown  the  national  institution  which 
did  not  need  the  Centennial  to  introduce  it  to  Europe — Fancy 
Drinks.  To  name  in  full  the  precious  fruitage  of  Yankee 
inventiveness  grafted  upon  the  Old  World  bibulousness — 
sherry-cobblers,  mint-juleps,  eye-openers,  cock-tails,  etc.,  etc. 
— might  be  to  imperil  my  reputation,  and  lead  the  younger 
clergy  into  dangerous  knowledge  ! 

Let  our  temperance  societies  gather  the  forces  of  social 
sentiment  against  these  &zr-barous  customs  ;  let  them  make 
it  unfashionable  to  treat  and  disreputable  to  tipple,  and  let 
them  prohibit  bar-drinking"  by  the  law  which  needs  no  State 
constabulary  to  enforce  it. 

The  whole  tone  of  feeling  as  to  drunkenness  needs  re- 
enforcing.  Even  though  it  be  a  disease,  it  should  be  treated  as 


UNFAVORABLE  PHYSICAL    CONDITIONS.  189 

a  shameful  disease.  The  will  consents  or  ignobly  yields,  and, 
despite  all  stress  of  circumstances,  that  surrender  must  be  a 
failure  which  is  disgrace.  Pity  must  not  degenerate  into  the 
sentimentality  which  emasculates  society.  Drunkenness  must 
be  felt  to  be  a  gross  and  ignoble  sin,  the  dethronement  of  man- 
hood, the  riot  of  the  brute  nature,  and,  as  such,  social  senti- 
ment must  shame  it. 

(3)  The  instinct  of  stimulation,  as  a  physical  craving,  is 
exaggerated  by  many  of  the  conditions  of  our  life. 

The  national  type  of  character  is  noted  for  its  intcnseness. 
We  do  every  thing  almost  fiercely.  Our  work  and  play  are 
alike  hard.  There  is  no  restfulness  in  our  temperament.  Our 
nervous  energy,  itself  a  climatic  effect,  pushes  life  at  high 
pressure.  Our  business  is  carried  on  under  a  ruinous  strain 
of  competition  and  amidst  a  feverish  speculativeness.  This 
life  is  telling  upon  our  physique.  Young  men  grow  old 
fast.  Middle  age  snaps  suddenly.  The  tension  drains  our 
nervous  force.  That  force  must  be  replenished  in  order  to 
carry  on  life. 

We  drive  this  high-pressure  life  upon  the  worst  system  of 
fuelling.  With  an  unsurpassed  cuisine  in  nature,  we  fare  badly ; 
selecting  our  foods  ignorantly  and  preparing  them  unskilfully. 
The  country  menu  is  pork,  pies  and  pickles  ;  its  science  of 
cooking — the  frying-pan.  The  city  is  haunted  by  the  gastro- 
nomical  ghoul — Bridget.  Many  people  supply  their  stom- 
achs systematically  with  doughy  bread,  dried  meats,  and 
greasy  fluids,  euphemistically  called  "  soups."  Away  from  our 
centres  of  civilization  we  still  find  those  who  pile  their  tables 
with  this  marvellous  spread,  and  bolt  the  mess  as  though  under 
time  contract  for  the  job.  Our  first  centenniad  has  produced 
the  American  disease — dyspepsia,  with  its  direful  disorders. 

Out  of  these  and  other  subtle  causes  has  come  about  the 


190  POVERTY  BREEDS  DRUNKENNESS. 

fact,  recognized  by  physicians,  that  the  vitality  of  our  genera- 
tion is  low.  We  are  tonicked  along.  The  stimulant  that  men 
naturally  seek  of  themselves  is  alcohol,  disguised  in  the  bitters 
and  other  quack  tonics  which  are  used  so  largely  through 
the  land,  or  pure  and  simple  in  wines  and  liquors.  The  real 
needs  of  our  physical  life  prompt  the  habits  which  result  in 
drunkenness.  This  is  probably  the  interpretation  of  much  of 
the  intemperance  found  among  us. 

The  poor  feel  all  this  with  intensified  severity.  A  generous 
diet  supplies  the  -force  which  a  scant  and  uniform  table  fails 
to  provide.  The  peasantry  of  Germany  and  France  turn  for 
that  which  their  food  lacks  to  wine  or  beer.  Our  poor  go  to 
whiskey. 

The  overcrowding  of  our  tenements  and  factories  deprives 
men  of  sufficient  air,  exhausts  its  oxygen  and  fouls  its  purity  ; 
depressing  vitality,  generating  disease,  developing  morbid  vices 
and  lowering  the  whole  morale.  The  homes  and  work-places  of 
the  poor  in  most  of  our  great  cities  are  alone  enough  to  ac- 
count for  the  prevalence  of  drunkenness  therein.  The  Board 
of  Charities  of  Massachusetts  distinctly  assigns  overcrowding 
as  one  of  the  causes  of  Boston's  drunkenness.  As  said  an 
officer  of  the  police  in  this  city  :  "  There  are  tenements  where 
it  is  impossible  to  live  without  drunkenness."  Canon  Girdle- 
stone  attributed  the  intemperance  of  the  peasantry  in  his  shire 
to  their  beastly  quarters  and  the  life  thus  gendered.  If  we 
expect  the  virtues  of  manhood,  we  must  secure  the  conditions 
of  manhood.  While  a  Christian  civilization  houses  and  feeds 
its  horses  more  carefully  than  its  men  and  women,  we  must 
expect  brute  lives  from  the  brutish  conditions  of  our  city 
poor. 

In  this  light,  the  problem  of  the  prevention  of  drunkenness 
is  a  study  in  pathology.  Preventive  medicine  holds  the  key 


LOW  MENTAL  LIFE  A   FACTOR.  19! 

which  a  larger  philanthropy  must  use.  The  true  temperance 
society  must  become  a  " Physical  Welfare  Society."  Its  aim 
must  be  to  disseminate  the  knowledge  which  sanitary  science 
evolves,  and  to  turn  the  forces  of  philanthropy  into  the  order- 
ing of  men's  lives  in  physical  righteousness.  Temperance 
reformers  must  concern  themselves  with  the  food  and  the 
homes  of  men  ;  must  ally  themselves  with  every  movement 
towards  a  more  rational  life  in  trade  and  society.  They  must 
encourage  that  union  of  business  and  charity  which  promises 
so  much  for  the  poor.  In  this  line  of  action  will  fall  holly- 
tree  inns  for  occasional  meals  ;  kitchens  for  the  issue  of  nutri- 
tious and  savory  soups,  such  as  would  make  a  poor  house- 
hold's dinner,  at  cost  prices  ;  co-operative  homes  such  as 
Philadelphia  and  Boston  are  building  up  around  their  suburbs, 
and  model  tenements  like  those  which  have  taken  the  place  in 
this  city  of  some  of  the  worst  nests  of  disease  and  vice. 

We  may  dig  thus  a  James  River  canal  which  will  cause  the 
evacuation  of  our  social  Richmond. 

(4)  The  instinct  of  stimulation,  as  a  craving  of  the  intellect- 
ual and  emotional  natures,  is  intensified  by  the  average  morale 
of  our  people. 

There  may  be  a  sense  of  poor,  low  life  in  mind  and  heart,  a 
thirst  for  larger,  fuller  being.  The  tides  may  run  sluggishly 
over  the  sands.  Life  will  then  suck  greedily,  from  the  springs 
above  or  the  springs  below,  the  waters  that  will  send  deep, 
strong  currents,  in  swirls  of  joyous  fulness,  through  the  wastes 
of  earth's  commonness. 

If  the  upper  sources  be  known,  men  will  seek,  in  ampler 
culture  and  the  life  of  love,  the  tiding  of  the  mind  and  heart 
with  joyousness.  If  they  be  unopened,  men  will  sink  the  shaft 
through  the  lower  nature,  to  draw  up  thus  the  life  of  appetite 
and  passion,  that  pleasure  in  some  form  may  flow  along  the  days. 


IQ2  DRINKING    VS.    THINKING. 

The  philosophy  of  the  wine-god  worship  Emerson  has  sung 
to  us  in  '*  Bacchus."  It  is  the  cry  of  life  for  deeper  draughts 
of  being.  As  men  actually  pray,  and  as  the  powers  below 
answer,  it  is  drunkenness — the  physical  excitation  of  mental 
and  affectional  life.  As  they  should  pray,  upward,  their  prayer 
would  be  answered  in  the  spiritual  stimulation  of  brain  and 
heart,  the  rush  of  thought,  the  sweep  of  feeling. 

The  prevention  of  drunkenness  is,  in  the  final  word,  the 
inspiration  of  the  life  of  thought  and  love,  the  culture  of 
character.  "  Be  not  drunk  with  wine,  wherein  is  excess,  but 
be  filled  with  the  spirit."  The  imperfect  culture  of  large 
classes  of  our  people  leaves  them  only  the  lower  resources. 
Notwithstanding  the  general  spread  of  intelligence  among  us, 
there  are  still  too  many  men  and  women  who  are  so  slightly 
cultured  as  to  have  opened  few  lines  of  aesthetic,  literary,  or 
scientific  life  far  enough  to  reach  their  satisfying  pleasures. 
Even  religion  is  often  too  much  upon  the  surface  to  keep  life 
green.  From  necessity  our  civilization  has  been  busied  with 
the  material  basis  for  the  future  society.  Our  native  culture 
has  still  the  dew  of  its  birth  upon  its  brow.  The  culturing  in- 
fluence of  other  social  standards  than  money-worth  is  weaker 
among  us  than  in  aristocratic  countries.  Wealth  that  has  been 
won  more  rapidly  than  culture,  having  few  tastes,  seeks  gratifi- 
cation in  the  luxuriousness  that  satisfies  the  animal  nature. 

Many  men  have  few  stimuli  out  of  business  save  indulgence. 
Women  escape  ennui — if  not,  as  the  Saturday  Review  lately 
suggested  of  their  English  sisters,  in  wine-drinking — in  opium, 
and  in  other  forms  of  stimulation.  The  passion  for  novel 
reading,  so  rife  among  young  women,  is  the  confession  of  a 
hunger  which  finds  satisfaction  in  the  excitement  of  the  high- 
wrought  stories,  and  in  the  unconscious  sensuousness  which 
stirs  the  lower  nature  under  decent  disguise. 


POVERTY  AND  MENTAL  ANAEMIA.  193 

This  mental  poverty  is  still  more  true  of  the  poor.  Their 
resources  are  fewer  and  lower.  The  bar  is  the  laborer's  club  ; 
the  tavern's  scraping  fiddle  is  his  opera.  A  "  good  drunk  " 
idealizes  the  pleasure  of  the  dregs  of  our  population  ;  a  "jolly 
spree  "  describes  the  holiday  of  the  average  laborer.  In  this  as- 
pect of  the  problem,  the  prevention  of  drunkenness  lies  in  the 
slow  work  of  opening  higher  realms  of  life.  The  advance  of 
the  nation  in  culture  will  be  an  advance  in  temperance.  The 
progress  of  a  sounder  education,  with  the  pleasure  thus  won  in 
literature,  science  and  the  arts,  will  stimulate  and  recreate  suf- 
ficiently. The  poor  are  to  be  weaned  from  the  grog-shops  by 
teaching  them  better  pleasures  and  giving  them  higher  tastes. 
Philanthropy  must  become  the  master  of  the  people's  play. 
The  Church  must  fearlessly  consecrate  amusement  to  the  ser- 
vice of  the  Lord  of  humanity,  instead  of  leaving  it  ascetically 
in  the  hands  of  the  devil.  If  some  rich  man  would  build  and 
endow  a  good,  cheap  music  hall,  a  People's  Central  Park 
Garden,  he  might  call  the  National  Temperance  Society  to 
christen  it.  Fellowship,  the  gratification  of  the  social  instincts, 
must  be  provided  in  such  wise  as  to  culture  self-respect  and 
ambition.  The  educational  influences  of  popular  lectures, 
readings,  etc.,  must  be  utilized.  Workingmen's  clubs  and  in- 
stitutes, which  so  happily  combine  sociability,  amusement  and 
instruction,  must  become  features  of  our  town  parishes.  When 
they  shall  be  multiplied,  as  they  now  are  in  England,  similar 
good  results  may  follow  for  the  cause  of  temperance. 

Every  instrumentality  that  makes  men  more  virtuous  gener- 
ally furthers  some  special  virtue  of  temperance.  Intemper-. 
ance  is  but  one  form  of  low  moral  life,  taking  this  shape  when, 
by  some  slight  change  of  circumstance,  it  might  have  taken 
some  other  shape  of  vice.  As  Dr.  Anstie  said  :  "  No  man  be- 
comes drunken  who  was  not  first,  in  a  larger  sense,  intemper- 


194  ADVANCE   OF   WHOLE  LINE. 

ate."  The  drunkenness  of  the  lowest  poor  might,  as  the 
Board  of  Charities  of  this  State  remarks,  equally  well  be  classi- 
fied as  vagrancy.  The  drunkenness  of  the  criminal  classes 
is  but  the  expression  of  their  general  viciousness.  Their 
other  vices  feed  the  habit  of  drinking.  They  steep  themselves 
in  liquor  in  order  to  nerve  the  heart  and  hush  the  conscience 
and  spur  the  outraged  body. 

After  all,  we  come  round  to  the  Church's  first  work — making 
bad  men  good,  regenerating  society  by  regenerating  individ- 
uals. 

III. 

If  this  bird's-eye  view  of  the  problem  be  correct,  it  will  be 
seen  that  the  prevention  of  drunkenness  is  to  be  reached  by  a 
general  advance  along  the  whole  line  of  progress,  physical, 
social,  mental  and  moral,  in  accordance  with  the  laws  of 
nature. 

Therefore  it  is  that  the  churches  which  are  based  on  the 
principle  of  nature  have  not  been  in  sympathy  with  the  older 
temperance  movement.  It  has  seemed  to  them  superficial  and 
empiric.  They  distrust  any  other  path  to  the  millennium  than 
that  of  a  symmetric  education.  They  do  not  value  straight- 
jacket  virtue,  nor  rely  for  social  salvation  upon  the  omnipo- 
tence of  the  police. 

Education  is,  of  course,  a  slow  cure.  But  what  good  work 
is  wrought  otherwise  than  slowly  ?  God  is  the  most  deliberate 
of  reformers.  The  last  of  the  fruits  of  the  spirit  is  temper- 
ance. 

Yet,  when  viewed  reasonably,  how  decided  is  the  advance 
that  has  been  made  upon  the  days  of  our  Anglo-Saxon  fore- 
fathers, when  manhood  was  tested  by  its  powers  of  bibulous- 
ness  ;  upon  the  last  century,  with  its  sign  upon  the  London  tav- 


THE    TEMPERANCE  MOVEMENT.  195 

erns — "  A  good  drunk  and  a  bed  for  a  sixpence  "  ;  and  even  on 
the  last  generation,  with  its  fine  gentlemen  rolling  under  the 
dinner-table,  and  carried  home  as  a  matter  of  course. 

In  this  general  advance  there  is  place  for  the  special  work  of 
temperance  organizations  along  the  various  lines  of  action  that 
have  been  indicated.  But  for  thorough  work,  these  organiza- 
tions must  be  broad  enough  to  associate  all  who  would  labor 
for  social  sobriety. 

The  temperance  movement  has  hitherto  stood  in  its  own 
way.  Its  aims  have  been  noble  and  its  efforts  enthusiastic  and 
heroic.  Despite  all  its  serious  mistakes,  it  has  wrought,  by 
its  incessant  agitation,  a  change  in  public  opinion  concerning 
drinking  usages  for  which  we  cannot  be  too  grateful.  None 
the  less,  it  must  be  said  that  it  has  manifested  a  narrowness 
which  has  identified  temperance  with  teetotalism,  an  intoler- 
ance which  has  made  "  prohibition  "  the  shibboleth  of  the 
cause,  and  a  superficial  dogmatism  which  has  gone  on  repeating 
disproven  facts,  proffering  arguments  long  emptied  of  all 
weight,  and  issuing  a  literature  which  is  the  sport  of  science 
and  the  grief  of  charity.  Need  we  wonder  that  such  a  spirit 
has  repelled  hosts  who  would  have  fought  under  the  banner  of 
temperance  ;  that  it  has  alienated  the  cultured  classes  and 
silenced  whole  churches  ?  So  long  as  our  National  Temper- 
ance Society  has  neither  sought  nor  allowed  the  alliance  of 
those  who  differed  from  its  theories  or  disapproved  of  its 
methods,  it  has  left  neutral  on  the  field  large  reserves  which 
might  have  reinforced  its  brave  attacks  upon  one  of  the  worst 
of  our  social  evils. 

Might  we  not  have,  as  the  issue  of  this  discussion,  a  Church 
Temperance  Society,  patterned  after  that  of  our  Mother 
Church  of  England  ;  seeking  to  arouse  a  rational  interest  in 
this  great  reform,  to  guide  it  by  candid  study,  to  cut  for  it 


196  A    CHURCH  SOCIETY. 

channels  accordant  with  natural  laws  ;  a  society  making  room 
on  its  broad  platform  for  those  who  seek  the  common  end, 
while  allowing  in  different  sections  the  employment  of  special 
methods — like  the  Church  itself,  letting  opinion  work  itself 
out  freely  under  the  unity  of  the  spirit  of  love  and  of  a  sound 
mind  ?  * 

*  The  Church  Temperance  Society  is  already  realizing  the  hope  expressed 
in  this  paragraph — thanks  to  the  zealous  labors  of  its  founders. 


VII. 
MORAL  EDUCATION  IN  THE  PUBLIC  SCHOOLS. 


OUTLINE. 

The  supreme  need  of  education — So  recognized  by  educational  authorities 
— Socrates — Locke  —  Milton  —  Pestalozzi  —  Froebel  —  Herbert  Spencer  — 
Lack  of  provision  for  ethical  education  in  our  public  schools — No  other 
institution  to  supply  the  need — How  can  our  common  schools  culture 
character  ? 

1.  Instruction — Opening  exercises  made  readings  in  character — Indirect 
instruction  through  special  studies — History — Physical  science — Direct  in- 
struction concerning  ethics. 

2.  Training — Much  done  already  through  the  discipline  of  our  public 
schools — Counteracting    influences   in   our   present   system — Directions   in 
which  we  should  develop  the  system — Higher  motivities — Self-government 
— Public  spirit — School  libraries — School  work-shops. 

3.  Atmosphere  —  Importance  of  —  Opening   exercises   may   create   such 
atmosphere — Personal  influence  the  most  vital  power. 


198 


MORAL  EDUCATION   IN   THE   PUBLIC   SCHOOLS.* 


The  supreme  need  of  ethical  education  in  our  public  schools 
ought  surely  to  need  no  assertion.  In  any  rational  theory  of 
education,  every  thing  should  lead  up  to  character  and  conduct. 
The  individual's  own  development  finds  its  completion  in  a 
noble  character.  The  interests  of  society  are  not  secured  in  a 
system  which  turns  out  a  brain  minus  a  conscience. 

Educational  authorities  have  always  recognized  character  as 
the  end  of  education.  When  Socrates  had  been  shown  a 
beautiful  youth,  he  wanted  to  know  if  his  soul  was  equally 
beautiful. f  Plato  said  :  "  I  mean  by  education  that  training 
which  is  given  by  suitable  habits  to  the  first  instincts  of  virtue 
in  children. "J  Locke  declared:  "It  is  virtue  then,  direct 
virtue,  which  is  the  head  and  invaluable  part  to  be  aimed  at  in 
education."  §  Milton,  in  characteristically  beautiful  language, 
writes  :  "  The  end  then  of  learning  is  to  repair  the  ruins  of  our 
first  parents,  by  regaining  to  know  God  aright,  and  out  of  that 
knowledge  to  love  him,  to  imitate  him,  to  be  like  him  as  we  may 
the  nearest  by  possessing  our  souls  of  true  virtue."  || 

With  Pestalozzi  and  Froebel,  character  was  the  aim  su- 
premely and  passionately  sought.  Herbert  Spencer's  work  on 

*  North  American  Review,  1883.     \  "  Laws,"  Book  II.,  §653  [Jowett]. 
f  "Charmides,"  §  154  [Jowett].       §  "  Thoughts  on  Education." 
||  "Tractate  on  Education." 
199 


200  LACK  OF  CHARACTER   CULTURE. 

education  recognizes  moral  training  as  the  crowning  result  to 
be  achieved. 

The  lack  of  proper  provision  for  ethical  education  in  our 
public  schools  is  painfully  plain.*  This  defect  our  public 
schools  share  with  our  private  schools.  The  task  of  ethical 
education  is  so  delicate  and  fine  that  the  wisest  may  well 
hesitate  over  it.  Job  work  here  is  worse  than  no  work. 
Prigs  and  pharisees  are  the  products  turned  out  from  poor 
character-factories,  and  no  fashion  for  uglinesses  is  likely  to 
bring  them  into  favor.  It  is  so  easy  to  spoil  a  soul  in  handling 
it !  Still,  something  needs  to  be  done,  as  carefully  as  may  be. 
That  something  must  be  done  in  the  people's  schools.  There 
is  no  other  institution  to  which  the  State  may  safely  trust  this 
most  important  task.  The  Sunday-school,  manned  by  good- 
hearted  amateurs,  cannot  achieve  a  thorough  ethical  culture. 

*  General  provision  for  moral  education  is  found  in  the  legislation  of 
some  of  the  States,  and  in  the  schedules  of  studies  and  directions  for  teach- 
ers issued  by  many  local  Boards  of  Education.  The  Legislature  of  Massa- 
chusetts, in  1789,  directed  teachers  "to  impress  on  the  minds  of  children 
and  youth  committed  to  their  care  and  instruction  the  principles  of  piety, 
justice,  and  a  sacred  regard  to  truth,  love  to  their  country,  humanity  and 
universal  benevolence,  sobriety,  industry  and  frugality,  chastity,  moderation 
and  temperance,  and  those  other  virtues  which  are  the  ornament  of  human 
society  and  the  bases  upon  which  a  republican  institution  is  founded." 
Philadelphia  enumerates  "morals  and  manners,"  among  the  studies  to  be 
pursued  in  its  schools.  In  the  "  directions  to  teachers,"  its  Board  of  Educa- 
tion observes  :  "  Remarks  upon  morals  and  manners  should  follow  the  read- 
ing of  the  Bible  by  the  principal.  These  remarks  should  be  made  in  the 
presence  of  the  whole  school,  and  as  frequently  as  the  incidents  of  the  school 
may  suggest."  These  occasional  instructions  are  urged  as  a  means  of  school 
discipline  :  "  Respectfulness  to  superiors,  obedience  to  parents  and  teach- 
ers, honesty  and  truthfulness  thus  enforced  and  impressed  upon  the  mind 
of  the  pupils  will  be  found  a  powerful  auxiliary  to  the  discipline  of  the 
school." 


SUNDAY-SCHOOL    VS.  PUBLIC  SCHOOL.  2OI 

An  hour  and  a  half,  once  a  week,  can  impart  but  little  instruc- 
tion, and  can  secure  no  training.  With  the  present  pre-occu- 
pation  of  orthodox  Sunday-schools  in  dogmatic  and  institutional 
religion,  even  their  limited  possibilities,  as  ethical  educators, 
are  largely  wasted.  Were  the  Sunday-school  devoted  to 
morals,  instead  of  dogmas,  it  would  still  labor  under  the 
fatal  defect  of  divorcing  ethical  from  intellectual  culture. 
Division  of  labor  cannot  be  carried  so  far  as  to  exempt  our 
day-schools  from  the  care  of  character.  A  child  cannot  be 
cut  up  into  bits  and  jobbed-out  to  different  specialists,  and 
then  be  made  up  under  the  hands  of  a  Master  of  Morals. 
Morality  must  be  learned  in  school,  as  in  actual  life,  amid 
secular  activities.  The  State  must  assume  her  rightful  function 
in  the  culture  of  character.  How,  then,  can  our  present  sys- 
tem be  led  on  into  this  highest  office  of  education  ? 

The  Board  of  Education  of  New  York  (1867)  places  "  manners  and 
morals  "  among  the  studies  of  the  primary  schools,  and  directs  as  follows 
for  the  several  grades  :  sixth  grade — "  Instruction  is  to  be  given  in  manners 
and  morals,  and  illustrated  by  means  of  the  incidents  of  school  and  home  "  ; 
fifth  grade — ditto  ;  fourth  grade — "  Instruction  for  cultivating  love  to  pa- 
rents, kindness,  obedience,  neatness,  truthfulness,  and  politeness,  to  be 
illustrated  by  examples,  incidents,  and  anecdotes  "  ;  third  grade — ditto  ; 
second  grade — "  Improve  opportunities  in  the  daily  exercises  of  the  schools 
by  conversations  upon  the  subjects  of  the  reading  lesson  and  all  appropriate 
incidents  to  inculcate  respectfulness,  obedience  to  parents,  honesty,  and 
truthfulness"  ;  first  grade — "  Instruction  by  means  of  school  incidents  and 
anecdotes,  so  conducted  as  to  aid  in  the  discipline  of  the  school."  In  the 
schedules  for  the  grammar  schools  no  reference  is  made  to  the  subject.  The 
Chicago  Board  of  Education  has  some  admirable  instructions  to  its  teachers, 
worthy  of  a  place  in  the  directions  of  all  school  boards.  See  Barnard's 
Journal  of  Education,  vol.  xix.,  p.  552. 

Few  of  our  school  boards  offer  any  detailed  directions  ;  the  work  is  one  that 
cannot  show  for  itself  as  does  other  teaching  ;  so  that  practically  this  whole 
subject  comes  to  be  left  very  much  to  each  individual  principal  and  teacher. 


2O2  INSTRUCTION — OPENING  EXERCISES. 

Ethical  education  may  be  carried  on  in  three  ways  :  through 
direct  instruction,  through  training,  and  through  the  influence 
of  the  spiritual  atmosphere  created  in  the  school. 

I.  Instruction. — This  should  be,  at  first,  not  talking  about 
virtue,  but  talking  up  virtue  ;  not  the  giving  of  scientific  knowl- 
edge concerning  goodness,  but  the  presentation  of  goodness  in 
forms  that  will  cause  children  to  fall  in  love  with  it.  Nature's 
order  is  first  the  concrete  and  then  the  abstract ;  first  examples 
of  the  law  and  then  the  principle  of  it.  The  grammar  of  ethics 
should  come  after  ethical  exercises.  Natural,  unconscious 
action  of  the  moral  sense,  responsive  to  the  forms  of  beautiful 
goodness  presented  to  it,  makes  healthier  children  than  any 
elaborate  studies  in  ethics,  though  in  the  best  of  scientific 
manuals.  Casuistry  forms  good  conscience-calisthenics  for 
tougher  years. 

The  opening  exercises  of  the  schools  might  include  choice 
ethical  readings,  brief  accounts  of  noble  men  and  women, 
tales  of  brave  and  fine  actions,  golden  sayings,  parables  and 
allegories  of  great  teachers,  illustrating  character  and  conduct. 
There  is  no  lack  of  material  for  such  readings  in  righteousness. 
Plutarch's  sketches  of  the  grand  old  Greeks  and  Romans  are 
full  of  nutriment  for  a  noble  high-mindedness.  Froissart's 
"  Chronicles  "  and  Fuller's  "  Worthies  of  England  "  would 
yield  choice  material  for  the  early  periods  of  the  modern 
world.  More  modern  history  abounds  in  tales  of  noble  man- 
hood and  womanhood.  What  a  text-book  of  patriotism  is  the 
story  of  Garibaldi  !  Our  own  history  is  rich  in  great  charac- 
ters, only  less  conspicuous  than  Washington  and  Lincoln. 
Every  form  of  personal  goodness,  every  phase  of  social 
righteousness  finds  ample  illustration  in  the  recorded  anec- 
dotes of  actual  men  and  women  The  daily  incidents  of  the 
newspapers  furnish  affecting  models  of  heroism  and  tragic 


BIBLE   QUESTION — OTHER  BIBLES.  203 

examples  of  the  consequences  of  vice.  The  sagas  of  the 
ancients  abound  in  ethical  parables,  nature-myths  woven  into 
heroic  legends.  Kingsley's  "  Heroes  "  and  Hawthorne's  "  Won- 
der-Book "  are  charming  specimens  of  the  ethical  power  of 
these  old  stories.  Scenes  and  sketches  from  our  great  novelists, 
and  passages  from  the  great  poets,  might  well  form  part  of  such 
readings. 

Between  the  equally  irrational  clamorings  of  the  advocates 
and  the  opponents  of  the  use  of  the  Bible  in  our  common 
schools,  there  is  no  chance  probably,  as  yet,  for  the  still,  small 
voice  of  reason.  Experience  may  be  trusted  to  convince  men 
of  open  minds  that,  in  the  world  of  letters,  there  are  no  writings 
so  effective  in  the  culture  of  character  as  portions  of  the  sacred 
books  of  the  Hebrews — the  people  whose  specialty  was  ethical 
passion — and  of  the  Christians.  Matthew  Arnold  has  divined 
this,  with  characteristic  sagacity,  and,  in  the  "  Great  Prophecy 
of  Israel's  Restoration,"  has  prepared  the  noble  poetry  of  the 
second  section  of  Isaiah  for  use  as  a  primer  in  schools.  One 
of  the  prime  benefits  to  follow  from  a  rational  conception  of 
the  Bible  is  the  ability  of  men  of  different  religious  opinions  to 
consider  practically  this  question  of  the  ethical  use  of  the  Bible- 
writings. 

The  golden  words  of  the  other  great  Bibles  of  Humanity 
should  be  utilized  in  the  same  way.  These  righteousness- 
readings  might  pursue  a  systematic  order,  covering  in  the 
course  of  a  school  year,  several  times,  all  the  great  personal 
and  social  virtues,  without  necessarily  laying  bare  to  the  chil- 
dren the  framework  of  the  classification.  For  such  readings 
there  should,  of  course,  be  prepared  a  rich  Anthology,  as  a 
basis  on  which  each  principal  could  build  his  own  selection. 

Instruction  could  also  be  given,  and  perhaps  with  most 
effectiveness,  in  an  indirect  manner,  through  some  of  the 


204  READERS — HISTORY— SCIENCES. 

special  departments.  Indirect  ethical  instruction  insinuates 
itself  most  readily  into  the  mind.  An  oblique  line  is  the  line 
of  greatest  power  in  communicating  this  knowledge.  As 
Emerson  says  :  "  It  is  the  things  of  which  we  do  not  think 
that  educate  us."  The  Readers  of  the  younger  children  might 
be  still  more  entirely  captured  for  the  purposes  of  character- 
building,  and  be  made  to  consist  chiefly,  as  they  do  now  in 
part,  of  choice  passages  of  ethical  value. 

History,  as  now  studied,  has  little  or  nothing  of  an  ethical 
character.  Without  displacing  its  really  important  instruction 
as  to  past  affairs,  it  might  be  made  to  throw  character  into  the 
foreground.  American  and  English  history  afford  just  as  fine 
a  field  for  character-studies  as  Hebrew  history,  if  we  had  the 
dominant  desire  of  the  ancient  Jews  to  study  character.  The 
ethical  aspects  of  great  men  and  the  moral  bearings  of  great 
events  should  be  kept  ever  in  mind  by  a  wise  teacher,  and 
would  afford  constant  opportunities  of  exercising  the  child- 
conscience  in  a  natural  and  interesting  way. 

The  physical  sciences  are,  without  any  conscious  aim  In  this 
direction  on  the  part  of  the  teacher,  a  constant  instruction  in 
some  valuable  moral  qualities — humility,  openness  of  mind, 
love  of  truth  and  reality,  patience,  judgment,  etc.  They  can  be 
made  to  further  the  culture  of  character  directly.  The  universal 
reign  of  law  can  be  pointed  out,  and  its  double  action  in  benefi- 
cence or  maleficence,  according  as  we  intelligently  understand 
and  loyally  obey  it  or  as  we  ignorantly  neglect  and  wilfully  defy 
it.  Moral  laws  can  be  shown  to  be  grounded  in  nature  ;  to  be 
.  no  mere  arbitrary  impositions  of  society,  no  illusions  of  the 
imagination,  but  part  of  "  trie  order  and  constitution  of  things." 
The  great  ethical  principles  can  be  traced  in  terms  of  physics, 
in  the  life  of  the  bird  and  beast.  The  bee-hive  and  the  ant-hill 
can  be  made  text-books  in  social  ethics,  parables  of  a  true  com- 


PHYSIOLOGICAL   TALKS— TRAINING.  2O$ 

monwealth  and  a  real  republic.  That  most  difficult  and  deli- 
cate of  didactic  tasks,  the  attempt  to  lead  the  child-mind  into 
pure  and  reverent  thought  concerning  the  sexual  relations,  may, 
perhaps,  best  be  achieved  through  a  poetic  reading  of  the  loves 
of  the  flowers.  Thus  it  was,  as  we  know  from  his  own  pen,  that 
Frcebel  caught  sight  of  the  great  law  which  runs  through  all 
life,  and  which  lifts  the  reproductive  function  into  sacredness. 
These  side-lights  may  reveal  to  the  child  the  infinite  mystery  of 
order  in  which  we  live  and  move  and  have  our  being  ;  and 
may  place  him  in  the  rightful  attitude  of  reverence  toward  law 
and  of  glad  consent  to  it,  which  is  the  secret  of  virtue. 

Instruction  might  also  be  effectively  given  through  talks  and 
lectures,  by  competent  specialists,  upon  the  physiological  ef- 
fects of  common  vices,  such  as  drunkenness,  gluttony,  etc. 
These  could  be  at  times  illustrated,  with  telling  effect ;  as  in 
the  colored  diagrams  which  temperance  lecturers  often  use. 
The  elder  boys  and  girls  could  be  thus  taught  separately,  by 
one  of  their  own  sex,  the  laws  of  purity  and  their  bearings  on 
life.  In  these  and  other  ways,  a  quite  sufficient  amount  of 
ethical  instruction  might  be  secured,  without  any  radical  change 
in  the  present  system  of  our  public  schools.  To  this  might 
possibly  be  added,  for  the  advanced  pupils,  some  systematic 
instruction  in  the  nature  and  authority  of  ethical  principles, 
and  their  relation  to  conventional  morality,  by  some  specially 
qualified  teacher,  if  such  instruction  could  be  given  without 
raising  dogmatic  issues. 

II.  Training.  Miss  Peabody  once  said,  in  happy  paradox, 
that  we  "learn  goodness  by  being  good."  To  make  children 
good,  even  for  a  while  ;  to  establish,  during  a  portion  of  each 
day,  a  rule  under  which  they  shall  conform  to  the  laws  of  right 
conduct — this  is  the  best  way  of  causing  them  to  learn  good- 
ness. In  ethics,  training  is  more  important  than  instruction. 


206  PUBLIC  SCHOOL  DISCIPLINE. 

Habit  is  the  mould  into  which  the  plastic  spirit  is  to  be  run, 
shaping  it  into  noble  character. 

Much  is  even  now  being  done  through  the  discipline  of  our 
public  schools.  The  children  come  under  a  system  of  law 
which  they  cannot  ignore,  change  nor  defy  ;  which  rewards 
their  obedience  and  punishes  their  disobedience.  This  alone, 
to  the  children  of  lawless  homes,  is  an  immense  boon.  Obedi- 
ence, which  Kant  held  to  be  the  fundamental  virtue,  is  rigidly 
enforced.  Punctuality,  cleanliness  and  other  simple  virtues, 
are  drilled  into  the  nature.  Good  manners  are  enjoined.  The 
effort  needful  to  master  the  daily  lessons  is  a  training  of  the 
will — the  central  force  of  character.  The  spur  of  the  "  mark- 
ing" rouses  ambition,  energy,  "  go-aheadativeness  "  ;  which 
are  at  least  antiseptics  to  the  lower  forms  of  vice.  These,  with 
the  other  factors  of  character-training,  count  for  much. 

But  with  these  good  elements,  there  are  commingled  influ- 
ences which  are  by  no  means  wholesome.  Self-love  is  a  pow- 
erful motor,  but  a  dangerous  one.  Nature  uses  it  to  begin  her 
work  of  development,  but  hastens  to  outrank  it  by  a  nobler 
motor.  It  is  doubtless  needful  to  goad  children  with  this  spur, 
but  a  sparing  use  should  be  made  of  it,  or  we  shall  have  men 
and  women  sensitive  to  no  finer  impulses.  There  is  a  grave 
danger  in  the  reckless  appeal  to  the  selfish  instincts  which  is 
made  by  the  prevalent  system  of  ranking  and  rewarding  pupils. 
Good  work  comes  to  be  done  not  for  the  work's  sake,  nor  for 
the  sake  of  others,  nor  even  for  the  sake  of  one's  own  improve- 
ment, but,  solely,  for  the  name  and  fame,  the  position  and 
profit  that  it  brings.  We  thus  train  the  oncoming  generations 
for  the  same  unhappy  struggle  after  self-advancement  that  is 
now  eating  into  public  spirit  in  the  State,  into  purity  in  society, 
and  into  honor  in  the  business  world.  In  our  impatience  for 
intellectual  results,  we  are  thus  sacrificing  character  upon  the 


DEFECTS  OF  THA  T  DISCIPLINE.  2O? 

altar  of  knowledge.  The  punishments  of  our  present  system, 
like  its  rewards,  are  seriously  faulty.  They  need  to  be  made 
less  physical  and  more  moral,  less  arbitrary  and  more  natural, 
less  tyrannous  and  more  just.  Suspicion,  espionage  and  fear, 
are  demoralizing  influences.  "  To  be  found  out,"  comes  to  be 
the  definition  of  "  wrong."  Scholars  establish  a  code  of  school- 
morals — as  is  well  known  to  be  the  case  in  some  schools — and 
count  it  no  wrong  to  cheat  the  master,  or  even  to  lie  directly 
to  him.  Children  need  to  be  thrown,  as  far  as  possible,  upon 
their  honor  ;  and  to  be  always  treated  respectfully,  until  they 
have  forfeited  this  right.  Truthfulness  and  self-respect  are 
seminal  virtues  ;  at  all  costs  to  be  cherished  in  the  young. 
The  experience  of  prison  reformers  might  give  some  valuable 
hints  in  the  right  use  of  punishment.  The  great  specialists  in 
penology  have  made  of  it  a  new  and  divine  instrument  in  the 
training  of  character. 

Perhaps,  the  most  important  change  to  be  made  in  the  dis- 
cipline of  our  public  schools  is  in  the  introduction  of  higher 
motivities.  Merit  must  be  rewarded  and  faults  must  be  pun- 
ished, but  rewards  and  punishments  alike  need  to  be  lifted  to  a 
higher  plane.  What  these  higher  motivities  are  can  be  better 
seen  by  a  morning  spent  in  a  true  kindergarten  than  from 
pages  of  writing.  The  little  ones  are  trained  there  in  true 
morality  ;  in  fellow-feeling,  brotherliness,  justice,  kindliness, 
love.  Froebel  has  embodied  in  the  beautiful  culture  of  the 
kindergarten  the  essential  spirit  of  ethics.  When  the  kinder- 
garten comes  to  be  made  the  basis  for  our  public-school  system, 
the  most  important  years  will  be  rescued  for  a  wise  moral 
training — a  training  which  will  fashion  the  being  aright  from 
the  start,  and  which,  we  may  hope,  will  gradually  shape  the 
school  that  shall  rest  upon  it  after  its  own  nobler  type  of 
character-culture. 


208  EXPERIMENTS  IN  SELF-GOVERNMENT. 

Self-government  ought  certainly  to  be  the  aim  to  which  all 
moral  education  should -look,  and  ought  to  be  developed,  as 
far  as  possible,  in  school  years.  As  a  means  to  this  end,  it 
might  be  worth  while  to  feel  along  in  the  direction  which  has 
been  taken  by  certain  notable  experiments  in  education.*  The 
great  English  schools  have  long  made  the  Sixth  Form  respon- 
sible for  the  order  of  the  rest  of  the  school.  The  school  estab- 
lished by  the  Messrs.  Hill  (Rowland  Hill  was  one  of  the  broth- 
ers) entrusted  the  entire  charge  of  maintaining  order  to  the  boys 
themselves.  The  superintendent  of  one  of  our  own  Houses 
of  Refuge  achieved  marvels  among  his  boys,  formerly  "  amen- 
able only  to  the  harshest  discipline,"  by  throwing  the  com- 
munity gradually  upon  its  own  self-government ;  so  that  at 
last  he  did  away  with  watchmen,  and  left  all  cases  of  dis- 
cipline to  be  decided  by  a  jury  of  the  boys.  The  schools  of  a 
republic  might  with  special  propriety  experiment  carefully  in 
this  direction.  The  principles  of  ethics  might  be  interestingly 
and  effectually  studied  by  the  elder  scholars  in  "  courts,"  be- 
fore which  actual  or  supposititious  cases  of  alleged  wrong-do- 
ing could  be  brought  up  for  trial ;  the  scholars  acting  as  jury 
and  as  lawyers.  Thus  the  child-conscience  could  be  exercised 
and  instructed  in  the  rights  of  person  and  property  ;  upon  the 
ethics  of  law-abidingness,  of  truthfulness,  of  intemperance,  of 
strikes,  etc.  Mr.  MacMullen,  who  in  his  own  school  tried  this  ex- 
periment, tells  how  he  found  one  fifth  of  his  boys  at  one  time 
defending  "  prompting,"  "  two  of  them  very  shrewdly  and  in- 
geniously "  ;  and,  at  another  time,  a  large  number  defending 
the  rightfulness  of  robbing  orchards.  One  of  our  private 
schools  in  New  England  tried  successfully  the  experiment  of 
a  stated  assembly,  like  the  Senate  or  the  House  of  Representa- 

*  Cf.  The  pamphlet  prepared  and  issued  by  Mr.  MacMullen,  1262  Broad- 
way, on  "Self-government  in  Schools." 


PUBLIC  DA  YS— SOCIETIES— LIBRARIES.  2OQ 

tives  of  the  United  States.  In  this  assumed  character,  the 
school-debates  were  carried  on  upon  questions  of  social  and 
political  importance  ;  thus  familiarizing  the  boys'  minds  with 
the  forms  of  our  government,  and  interesting  them  in  public 
affairs,  while  training  them  in  the  self-control  of  courteous 
discussion. 

Public  spirit  might  be  nurtured  by  interesting  observances 
upon  the  great  national  holidays  ;  Washington's  Birthday, 
Decoration  Day,  Fourth  of  July,  etc.  Societies  might  be 
formed  among  the  children,  looking  to  the  cultivation  of  tem- 
perance and  thrift.  The  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  has 
founded  an  Order  of  Knighthood  among  the  boys  of  its 
Sunday-Schools,  which  seeks  to  promote  personal  purity  and 
sobriety.  In  some  of  the  French  schools,  savings  societies 
have  been  introduced  with  marked  benefit.  Certain  industrial 
schools — girls'  sewing  schools — in  New  York  have  established 
savings-banks,  and  have  received  an  encouraging  patronage. 
If  an  afternoon  were  devoted  once  a  week  to  such  court  and 
congress  and  society  sessions,  the  results  upon  the  character 
of  the  children  might  be  very  valuable. 

A  library  of  well-selected  literature  in  each  school  could  be 
made  a  powerful  adjunct  in  the  culture  of  character.  Books 
and  papers  are,  after  all,  the  chief  educators.  And  here  the 
children  pursue  an  elective  course.  To  teach  them  to  choose 
wisely  those  silent  masters  who  are  to  mould  their  lives,  is  one 
of  the  best  services  to  be  rendered  them.  For  lack  of  such 
training,  they  patronize  the  host  of  demoralizing  teachers  who 
await  them  on  the  news-stands,  and  who  teach  them  from  sen- 
sational tales  and  tainted  novels.  In  nothing  is  a  guiding 
hand  more  needed  than  in  forming  the  friendship  of  books. 
The  great  body  of  the  scholars  would  not  follow  such  guid- 
ance, and  none  might  follow  it  wholly  ;  but  many  could  be  in- 


210  SCHOOL    WORKSHOP— ATMOSPHERE. 

fluenced  by  it ;  and,  if  the  co-operation  of  parents  was  secured, 
the  present  ravenous  consumption  of  low  literature  might  be 
checked,  and  a  better  taste  formed.  There  is  no  safeguard 
against  a  bad  taste  equal  to  the  creation  of  a  good  taste. 

A  workshop  in  each  school  would  be  another  valuable  an- 
nex. Our  present  divorce  between  intellectual  and  manual 
education  is  fruitful  of  moral  ills.  It  robs  the  handworker  of 
that  interest  in  his  labor  which  it  could  and  should  yield  him, 
and  of  the  safeguards  which  it  might  throw  around  him  in  the 
human  hunger  for  "  more  life  and  fuller."  It  unfits  the  mass 
of  those  who  are  graduated  from  our  common  schools  for  the 
common  works  of  the  common  people,  in  all  lands  and  ages, 
while  it  fails  to  fit  them  for  the  "  genteel "  pursuits  to  which 
they  aspire,  and  in  which  only  the  superior  minds  can  hope  to 
succeed  ;  and  so  it  crowds  our  cities  with  men  and  women  for 
whom  life  is  one  prolonged  and  precarious  struggle,  with  tem- 
tation  ever  yawning  below  them.  "  To  dress  it  and  to  keep 
it " — thus  ran  the  charge  of  the  Divine  Educator  to  the  first 
pupil,  in  the  child-garden  of  the  Eden  legend.  There  is  that 
in  character  which  handicrafts  alone  seem  to  develop.  Alike, 
then,  for  their  indirect  and  for  their  direct  bearings  on  character 
and  conduct,  the  introduction  of  manual  training  is  of  prime 
importance  in  the  development  of  our  public  school  system. 

III.  Atmosphere. — In  the  growth  of  the  plant,  atmospheric 
conditions  are  of  at  least  co-equal  importance  with  the  nature 
of  the  seed  sown  and  the  quality  of  the  culture  bestowed  upon 
it.  That  subtle  omnipotence,  the  ethical  atmosphere  of  a 
school,  must  be  looked  after  by  the  guardians  of  our  youth. 
There  are  schools  which  are'charged  with  the  potent  influences 
of  goodness,  in  which  the  children  breathe  in  virtue.  Of  all 
that  goes  to  form  such  atmospheric  conditions,  three  factors 
may  be  mentioned. 


MUSIC— PERSONAL  INFLUENCE,  211 

The  opening  exercises  may  charge  the  air  with  ethical  ozone, 
and  create  the  spiritual  temperature  in  which  conscience  buds 
and  blooms.  Music  is  of  especial  value  to  this  end.  The 
authorities  upon  education,  from  Plato  to  Froebel  and  Goethe, 
emphasize  the  function  of  music  in  moral  education.*  It 
rouses  and  guides  the  feelings  in  any  desired  direction,  and, 
when  well  used,  charges  the  soul  with  pure  passion  and  moulds 
the  dispositions  ;  and,  by  daily  repetitions,  its  vibrations  write 
the  laws  of  noble  life  in  the  very  tissues  of  the  body.  There  is 
no  other  instrumentality  so  potent  in  spiritual  influences.  The 
wise  master  holds  in  it  the  wand  with  which  he  can  touch  the 
natures  of  his  children,  wakening  responsive  echoes,  and  key- 
ing the  school  to  the  right  pitch.  We  are  but  beginning  to 
realize  its  educational  possibilities.  At  present,  it  is  used 
partly  as  a  recreation,  and  partly  as  one  more  accomplishment 
to  be  acquired.  We  must  learn  how  to  use  it  in  the  fashioning 
of  plastic  character. 

Personal  influence  remains  always  the  last  and  most  vital 
formative  power  in  the  atmospheric  quality  of  a  school.  The 
schools  that  have  been  most  noted  for  the  culture  of  character 

*  Musical  training  is  a  more  potent  instrument  than  any  other,  because 
rhythm  and  harmony  find  their  way  into  the  secret  places  of  the  soul,  on 
which  they  mightily  fasten,  imparting  grace,  and  making  the  soul  grace- 
ful of  him  who  is  rightly  educated.  .  .  .  And  also  because  he  who  has 
received  this  true  education  of  the  inner  being,  with  a  true  taste,  while  he 
praises  and  rejoices  over,  and  receives  into  his  soul  the  good,  and  becomes 
noble  and  good,  will  justly  blame  and  hate  the  bad,  now,  in  the  days  of  his 
youth,  even  before  he  is  able  to  know  the  reason  why  ;  and  when  reason 
comes,  he  will  recognize  and  salute  her  as  a  friend. — Plato  :  "  The  Re- 
public," book  iii.,  §402.  (Jowett.) 

Song  is  the  first  step  in  education  ;  all  the  rest  are  connected  with  it,  and 
attained  by  means  of  it.  .  .  .  What  religious  and  moral  principles  we 
lay  before  our  children  are  communicated  in  the  way  of  song. — Goethe  : 
"  Wilhelm  Meister's  Travels,"  chapter  10. 


212  HOW  TO  GET  TRUE   TEACHERS. 

have  always  had  a  noble  man  or  woman  at  the  core  of  their 
wise  systems.  Arnold  made  Rugby.  Some  vital  personality 
makes  every  school  which  makes  men.  We  cannot  hope  to  se- 
cure geniuses  or  saints  for  all  our  peoples'  schools.  They  are  not 
needful.  We  can,  however,  secure  in  hosts  of  our  schools,  as 
we  have  secured  in  many  of  them,  men  and  women  of  high 
character,  and  of  gracious  personal  influence,  whose  presence 
will  be  the  prime  factor  in  their  culture  of  child  character.  To 
get  them,  we  must  make  the  position  more  dignified  and  hon- 
orable, and,  as  such,  more  remunerative.  The  most  important 
of  society's  functions  must  have  a  social  status  and  a  pecuniary 
reward  corresponding  to  the  high  worth  of  the  teacher's 
service. 

For  all  this  work  of  moral  education,  the  first  step  forward 
is  the  securing  of  a  proper  preparation  for  the  specialty  of 
character-culture  in  our  normal  schools.  We  must  educate 
our  educators. 


VIII. 

THE     FREE     KINDERGARTEN     IN     CHURCH 

WORK. 


OUTLINE. 

Church  work  a  work  of  education. 

1.  Defects  of  the  people's  scho.ols. 

2.  Inadequacy  of  Sunday-schools  and  parish  schools. 

3.  These  defects  largely  remediable  by  utilizing  the  period  of  infancy — 
Value  of,  for  education. 

4.  Such  instruction  must  consist  of  play — Educative  function  of  play — 
Purifying  influences  of  happy  play. 

5.  Physical  training  of  the  Kindergarten,  and  its  bearing  on  character. 

6.  Industrial  training  of  the  Kindergarten,  and  its  bearing  on  character. 

7.  Moral  culture  through  the  social  laws  of  the  Kindergarten. 

8.  Moral  culture  through  the  social  manners  of  the  Kindergarten. 

9.  Moral  culture  in  the  nurture  of  unselfishness. 

10.  Moral  culture  through  a  life  corporate  and  individual. 

11.  Moral  culture  through  an  atmosphere  of  love. 

12.  Religious  culture  in  the  Kindergarten. 

13.  This  complete  child  garden  the  foundation  of  Church  work. 

14.  Providential  preparation  of  the  churches  for  the  welcoming  of  this 
work. 


214 


THE  FREE  KINDERGARTEN  IN  CHURCH  WORK* 


Church  work  is  slowly  coming  to  be  read  in  the  light  of 
those  great  words  of  the  Church's  Head  which  illumine  his 
personal  mission. 

And  he  came  to  Nazareth,  where  he  had  been  brought  up :  and,  as  his 
custom  was,  he  went  into  the  synagogue  on  the  Sabbath-day  and  stood  up 
for  to  read.  And  there  was  delivered  unto  him  the  book  of  the  prophet 
Esaias.  And  when  he  had  opened  the  book  he  found  the  place  where  it  was 
written — The  Spirit  of  the  Lord  is  upon  me,  because  He  hath  anointed  me 
to  preach  the  gospel  to  the  poor  ;  He  hath  sent  me  to  heal  the  broken- 
hearted, to  preach  deliverance  to  the  captives  and  recovering  of  sight  to  the 
blind,  to  set  at  liberty  them  that  are  bruised,  to  preach  the  acceptable  year 
of  the  Lord.f 

Now  when  John  had  heard  in  the  prison  the  works  of  Christ,  he  sent  two 
of  his  disciples  and  said  unto  him — Art  thou  he  that  should  come,  or  do  we 
look  for  another  ?  Jesus  answered  and  said  unto  them,  Go  and  shew  John 
again  those  things  which  ye  do  hear  and  see  :  the  blind  receive  their  sight 
and  the  lame  walk,  the  lepers  are  cleansed  and  the  deaf  hear,  the  dead  are 
raised  up  and  the  poor  have  the  gospel  preached  unto  them.  \ 

The  Master's  mission  was  to  heal  the  sickness  and  sorrow, 
the  suffering  and  sin  of  earth,  in  the  power  of  that  Holy  Spirit 
which  was  to  continue  his  work,  slowly  developing  "  the  regen- 
eration "  of  all  things,  in  a  new  heavens  and  a  new  earth.  His 

*  Barnard's  American  Journal  of  Education,  June,  1881. 
f  Luke  :  iv.,  16-19.  \  Matt.  :  xi.,  2-5. 

215 


2l6  CHURCH  WORK  EDUCATION. 

credentials  were  the  signs  of  his  power  to  effect  this  herculean 
labor. 

The  Church's  work  must,  then,  be  the  carrying  on  of  his  task 
of  social  regeneration  ;  a  labor  of  practical  philanthropy  led 
up  into  the  heights  of  a  spiritual  re-formation  ;  and  the  "  notes  " 
of  a  true  church  will  lie  in  its  possession  of  the  Master's  power 
to  further  the  slow  evolution  of  the  better  order.  If  only  to 
make  earth  the  nursery  for  the  heavens,  it  must  be  put  into 
order,  the  frightful  ills  of  civilization  be  healed,  the  dreadful 
disorders  of  society  be  righted,  and  man  be  breathed  out  into 
the  son  of  God.  The  magnificent  aspiration  of  St.  Paul  is  the 
ideal  unto  which  all  Church  work  yearns. 

Till  we  all  come  (beggarly,  diseased,  vicious,  malformed  runts  of  human- 
ity), in  the  unity  of  the  faith,  and  of  the  knowledge  of  the  son  of  God,  unto 
a  perfect  man  (manhood)  ;  to  the  measure  of  the  stature  of  the  fulness  of 
Christ.* 

Such  a  Church  work  must  plainly  be  a  task  of  education. 
And  unto  this  form  of  philanthropy  every  labor  of  love  for 
suffering  humanity  is  coming  round.  The  experience  of  all 
who  grapple  with  the  legion  forms  of  social  ill  results  in  one 
conclusion.  Prevention  is  better  than  cure  ;  and  prevention 
is — education.  Sanitarians,  prison  reformers,  temperance  ad- 
vocates, charity  administrators,  pastors,  all  alike  are  joining  in 
one  cry — educate.  We  grow  hopeless  of  making  over  again 
the  wrongly  made  up,  misshapen  monstrosities  that  are  chari- 
tably called  men  and  women,  and  feel  that  the  one  hopeful 
work  is  in  seeing  that  the  unspoiled  raw  material,  ever  coming 
on,  is  better  made  up  in  the_ start.  Given  a  true  education  and 
we  may  hope  for  a  true  manhood  and  womanhood,  a  true 
society  growing  steadily  towards  St.  Paul's  far  off  ideal.  The 
Church's  work  would  then  seem  to  be  that  which  the  Master 

*  Ephesians  :  iv.,  13. 


DEFECTS  OF  PUBLIC  SCHOOLS,  .21? 

outlined  in  his  parting  word — "  Go  ye,  disciple  all  nations  "  ; 
teach  men  in  the  life  of  the  perfect  man,  and  train  them  tow- 
ards the  ideal  manhood.  The  subject  of  the  last  charge  of  the 
great  Bishop  of  souls  was — education. 

I. 

Education  of  one  sort  and  another  we  have  no  lack  of,  but 
thoughtful  people  are  coming  to  see,  that  which  the  wisest 
educators  have  known  for  no  little  time,  that  it  is  mostly  very 
crude  and  raw.  Along  with  the  conviction  that  education  is 
the  solvent  of  the  social  problems,  there  is  spreading  fast  and 
far  the  conviction  that  we  have  not  yet  educated  the  true 
education  ;  that  our  present  systems  are  viciously  unsound,  and 
so  are  building  up  the  old  diseased  body  social  instead  of  the 
new  and  healthy  organism  of  the  coming  man.  With  all  that 
is  good  in  our  people's  schools  they  seem  lacking  in  certain 
vital  elements.  They  not  only  fail  to  provide  for  a  true  physi- 
cal culture,  but  by  their  high-pressure  system  of  study  they 
positively  oppose  that  culture  ;  which,  since  health  is  the  capi- 
tal of  life,  is  the  prime  endowment  for  every  human  being. 
They  fail  also  to  provide  for  any  industrial  training.  Nearly 
all  men  and  a  large  minority  of  women  must  earn  their  daily 
bread,  and  the  majority  of  women  must  care  for  the  bread  that 
their  husbands  earn.  The  great  mass  of  men  and  women  must 
be  chiefly  busied  with  manual  work  in  the  field,  the  factory  or 
the  house.  To  prepare  this  mass  of  men  and  women  to  do 
this  necessary  work  successfully  and  happily,  finding  their 
bread  in  it  honorably,  and  that  bread  of  thought  and  sentiment 
on  which  the  finer  part  of  their  beings  live  in  the  interest  which 
it  calls  forth — this  would  seem  to  be  an  essential  part  of  a 
rational  education  for  the  common  necessities  of  the  common 


2 1 8  LACK  OF  MORAL  ED UCA  TION. 

people  ;  all  the  more  imperative  since  the  old  time  apprentice- 
ships have  disappeared.  In  the  absence  of  this  practical  train- 
ing, all  ranks  of  labor  are  crowded  with  incompetent  "hands," 
and  domestic  economy  is  caricatured  in  most  homes  ;  a  rest- 
less discontent  with  manual  employments  is  pushing  a  super- 
ficially educated  mass  of  men  and  women  into  the  over-full 
vocations  that  are  supposed  to  be  genteel,  and  is  storing  up 
slumberous  forces  of  anarchy  among  our  workingmen  ;  thus 
sapping  health  and  wealth  in  the  homes  of  the  poor  who  most 
need  both. 

Then,  to  pass  by  other  grave  defects  best  behooving  profes- 
sional educators  to  emphasize,  there  is  a  still  more  serious  lack 
in  our  common-school  system  which  the  churches  are  naturally 
quick  to  feel.  The  greatest  minds  have  always  united  in  the 
view  so  tersely  expressed  in  Matthew  Arnold's  familiar  phrase, 
"  Conduct  is  three  fourths  of  life."  The  end  of  all  culture  must 
be  character,  and  its  outcome  in  conduct.  The  State's  concern 
in  education  is  to  rear  virtuous,  law-abiding,  self-governing 
citizens.  The  Church's  concern  is  not  something  different 
from  the  State's — it  is  the  same,  plus  something  more.  She 
too  seeks  to  grow  good  subjects,  only  running  their  relation  to 
law  up  and  on  ;  men  whose  citizenship  is  in  heaven.  State 
and  Church  alike  would  nurture  good  men,  for  this  world  or 
the  next.  To  this  the  Church  believes  with  the  State  that 
moral  culture  is  needful,  but  she  believes  also  that  religious 
culture  is  none  the  less  needful.  The  churches  feel  the  need 
of  supplementing  the  education  of  the  common  schools  with 
some  ampler  provision  for  moral  and  religious  training.  If  the 
homes  of  the  land  were  what  they  ought  to  be  they  would  sup- 
ply this  lack.  But,  because  of  the  utter  imperfection  of  educa- 
tion in  the  past,  they  are  unfortunately  far  from  being  semi- 
naries of  character.  Some  other  provision  must  be  made. 


DEFECTS  OF  SUN  DA  Y  SCHOOLS,  ETC.  219 

II. 

The  churches  have  utilized  a  simple  mechanism  for  moral 
and  religious  education,  in  the  Sunday-school.  No  word  from 
one  who  owes  so  much  to  this  institution  can  ever  detract  from 
its  just  honor.  It  has  been  and  still  is  an  indispensable  pro- 
vision for  our  present  stage  of  development.  It  is  doing  a 
noble  work  which  else  were  left  largely  undone.  But  its  best 
friends  are  not  blind  to  its  limitations.  The  clergy  generally 
are  painfully  aware  of  its  utter  inadequacy  to  the  great  task 
which  it  has  assumed.  Superintendents  and  teachers  feel  that 
they  are  asked  to  make  brick  without  being  supplied  with 
straw.  For  an  hour  or  two  on  one  day  of  the  week,  a  crowd  of 
children,  often  reaching  into  the  hundreds,  is  gathered  into 
one  room,  put  in  the  hands  of  a  changing  corps  of  volun- 
teer teachers,  mostly  very  young,  animated  generally  with 
laudable  motives,  but  too  often  painfully  unconscious  of  the 
momentousncss  of  the  task  which  they  have  lightly  undertaken, 
and  all  untrained  for  the  delicate  work  of  soul  fashioning.  As 
a  system  of  education  in  Christian  character,  such  an  institu- 
tion is  grotesquely  inadequate.  For  that  education  must  be 
chiefly  a  nurture  ;  a  tenderly  cherished  growth  under  the  right 
conditions,  duly  supplied  ;  a  training  rather  than  an  instruction, 
a  daily  not  a  weekly  work.  The  ideal  of  such  an  education,  of 
course,  will  be  the  story  of  the  Sinless  Man  ;  a  growth,  gently 
nurtured,  in  a  pious  home,  at  the  knee  of  a  holy  mother, 
through  patient  years  ;  hastened  to  the  flower,  under  the  soft 
springtide  of  the  soul,  within  the  warmer  atmosphere  of  the 
temple,  in  the  opening  consciousness — "Wist  ye  not  that  I 
must  be  in  my  Father's  ?  "  But,  again  I  say,  we  are  concerned 
with  the  unideal  state  of  earth  to-day,  whereon  homes  are  not 
like  the  Nazarite  cottage  and  mothers  are  far  below  the  stature 
of  the  great-souled  Mary. 


22O  PARISH  SCHOOLS— VALUE   OF  INFANCY. 

What  is  to  be  done  now  ?  Something,  plainly,  the  churches 
feel,  and  are  sore  perplexed  as  to  what  that  something  is  to  be. 
A  portion  of  the  churches  seems  inclined  to  try  in  some  way  to 
make  the  common  schools  attend  more  carefully  to  moral  and 
religious  education.  But  how  to  do  it  does  not  yet  appear. 
The  religious  phase  of  this  problem  is  beset  with  baffling  per- 
plexities. Others  of  the  churches  are  tending  in  the  direction 
of  parish  schools.  But  these  cannot  hope  to  compete  with 
the  State  schools  in  mental  culture,  and  so  must  offer  to  the 
parents  of  the  land  the  choice  between  a  good  general  educa- 
tion with  a  defective  moral  and  religious  training,  and  a  good 
moral  and  religious  training  (possibly)  with  a  narrower  and 
feebler  general  education.  The  average  American  will  not 
long  hesitate  in  that  alternative,  when  he  can  relieve  his  con- 
science by  falling  back  upon  the  Sunday-school.  Our  people 
are  thoroughly  committed  to  the  system  of  State  schools,  and 
will  not  favorably  view  any  apparent  sectarian  opposition  to 
them.  We  need,  not  a  system  substituted  for  the  State  schools 
and  benefiting  only  a  small  portion  of  the  people,  but  one  sup- 
plementing the  State  schools  and  benefiting  the  whole  people. 
Is  such  a  system  discoverable  ?  And  can  such  a  system  for 
moral  and  religious  nurture  be  made  to  supplement  the  com- 
mon schools  also  in  the  other  defects  alluded  to,  the  lack  of 
physical  training  and  industrial  education  ? 

III. 

The  most  valuable  period  of  childhood  for  formative  pur- 
poses is  now  unclaimed  by"  the  State.  The  richest  soil  lies 
virgin,  un-preempted,  free  for  the  Church  to  settle  upon  and 
work  for  the  highest  culture.  It  is  no  new  secret  that  the  most 
plastic  period  lies  below  childhood,  in  infancy  proper. 


EDUCATION    WROUGHT  IN  INFANCY.  221 

Thoughtful  people  have  long  ago  perceived  that  the  chief  part 
of  all  human  learning  is  wrought  in  those  seven  years  ;  the 
greatest  progress  made,  the  largest  acquisitions  won,  the  tough- 
est difficulties  overcome.  No  pretentious  culture  won  in  later 
years  is  really  half  so  wonderful  as  the  almost  unconscious 
education  which  is  carried  on  in  the  period  of  infancy.  Dame 
Nature  is  busy  with  her  babes  and  has  them  at  incessant 
schooling.  From  the  first  dawn  of  intelligence  they  are  under 
an  unceasing  series  of  lessons,  in  form  and  color,  in  weight  and 
resistance,  in  numbers  and  relations,  in  sound  and  speech. 
Every  sense  is  being  called  into  exercise,  cultivated  and  re- 
fined. The  perceptions  are  ever  at  work  observing,  comparing, 
contrasting.  Mastery  is  being  won  over  every  physical  power  ; 
the  eye,  the  ear,  the  hand,  the  feet,  are  being  trained  into  sup- 
ple, subtle  skill.  The  bewildering  fingering  of  Rubenstein  or 
Von  Bulow  does  not  tell  of  a  finer  discipline  than  that  which 
is  being  carried  on  in  the  games  of  the  active  boy. 

The  sentiments,  the  imagination,  the  reason,  the  conscience 
are  undergoing  a  corresponding  development  in  this  period 
which  we  think  of  as  entire  idleness.  Here  and  there  we  get 
hints  of  the  reach  of  the  infant  mind  in  its  beautiful  thoughts, 
its  fine  feelings,  its  ethical  distinctions,  its  religious  musings. 
The  veil  lifts  from  the  greatest  of  wonder  lands,  in  which  we 
all  lived  once,  and  out  from  which  we  have  passed  through  the 
waters  of  the  river  Lethe.  We  think  lightly  of  the  inner  life 
of  infancy  because  we  know  so  little  of  it.  We  fancy  that  we 
are  to  teach  our  little  ones  religion.  At  the  best,  we  can 
only  formulate  the  mystery  which  lies  all  round  them,  vague 
and  nebulous  but  profoundly  real.  Below  the  best,  we  suc- 
ceed in  botching  and  marring  the  divine  growth  which  is 
going  on  within  their  souls,  unseen  by  our  dim  eyes  ;  in  im- 
posing our  adult  conceptions  injuriously  on  souls  unprepared 


222  THAT  EDUCATION   THROUGH  PLAY. 

for  them  ;  and  so  we  turn  the  windows  through  which  our  sin- 
seared  souls  see  light  into  the  shutters  closing  the  light  off 
from  those  holy  innocents  whose  inner  being,  angel-wise,  should 
always  behold  the  face  of  their  Father  in  heaven.  Words- 
worth's ode  is  the  very  truth  of  the  spirit  world.  The  garden 
of  the  Lord,  where  God  himself  walks  amid  the  trees  in  the 
cool  of  the  day,  is  behind  us  all  ;  and  our  best  hope  is  to  climb 
round  to  it  in  the  "  lang  last,"  as  the  seer  visions  in  the  far 
future  of  the  race  and  of  the  individual  ;  when  having  been 
converted  and  become  as  little  children  we  enter  once  more 
the  kingdom  of  heaven.  For,  as  these  words  remind  us,  it  is 
no  less  an  authority  than  that  of  the  Lord  Christ  that  teaches 
us  to  view  in  childhood  the  spiritual  ideal. 

Infancy  then,  the  first  seven  years,  is  the  most  vital  period 
for  the  formative  work  of  a  true  education  ;  whether  we  have 
regard  to  physical  and  mental,  or  moral  and  spiritual  develop- 
ment. Plato  saw  this  long  centuries  ago,  and  wrote  :  "  The 
most  important  part  of  education  is  right  training  in  the  nur- 
sery." * 

As  late  as  our  greatest  American  theologian — the  noblest  of 
English  theologians  himself  being  the  judge — this  view  reiter- 
ates itself  with  especial  reference  to  the  task  of  moral  and  re- 
ligious culture  which  the  churches  have  in  hand.  Dr.  Bushnell's 
"  Christian  Nurture  "  insists  upon  the  prime  importance  of  in- 
fancy. 

IV. 

If  then  the  only  period  of  childhood  not  foreclosed  by  the 

State  be   precisely  that  which  is  most  hopeful  for  the   true 

education — the  education  which  aims  for  something  like  an 

integral  culture,  a  fashioning  of  the  whole  manhood  into  health, 

*  Laws  I.,  §  643. 


POSSIBILITIES  IN  PLAY.  22$ 

intelligence  and  virtue  buoyant  with  the  love  of  God — the 
question  becomes  one  of  technique.  How  are  we  to  utilize 
this  most  plastic  but  most  delicate  of  periods  ?  How  teach 
and  train  the  tender  lives  which  seem  unready  for  any  thing 
but  play  ?  All  high  and  serious  labor  upon  this  period  appears 
to  be  ruled  out  by  the  fractible  nature  of  the  material  upon 
which  we  are  to  work.  These  fragile  bodies  can  bear  little 
fatigue,  these  tender  minds  can  bear  little  strain,  these  delicate 
souls  can  bear  little  public  handling  without  spoiling.  "O 
slow  of  heart  to  believe  all  that  the  prophets  have  written  !  " — 
must  we  not  hear  the  Spirit  of  Truth  sadly  whispering  ?  Cen- 
turies since,  did  not  the  teacher  sent  from  God  to  the  Greeks, 
the  wisest  mind  of  the  wisest  people  of  antiquity,  tell  the  world 
— if,  having  ears  to  hear,  they  would  hear — the  riddle  of  this 
Sphinx  ? 

Our  youth  should  be  educated  in  a  stricter  rule  from  the  first,  for  if 
education  becomes  lawless  and  the  youths  themselves  become  lawless,  they 
can  never  grow  up  into  well-conducted  and  meritorious  citizens.  And  t 'he 
education  mttst  begin  with  their  plays.  The  spirit  of  law  must  be  imparted 
to  them  in  music,  and  the  spirit  of  order  attending  them  in  all  their  actions 
will  make  them  grow  ;  and  if  there  be  any  part  of  the  state  which  has  fallen 
down  will  raise  it  up  again.* 

According  to  my  view,  he  who  would  be  good  at  any  thing  must  prac- 
tise that  thing  from  his  youth  upwards,  both  in  sport  and  earnest,  in  the 
particular  manner  which  the  work  requires  ;  for  example,  he  who  is  to  be  a 
good  builder,  should  play  at  building  children's  houses  ;  and  he  who  is  to 
be  a  good  husbandman,  at  tilling  the  ground  ;  those  who  have  the  care  of 
their  education  should  provide  them  when  young  with  mimic  tools.  And 
they  should  learn  beforehand  the  knowledge  which  they  will  afterwards  re- 
quire for  their  art.  For  example,  the  future  carpenter  should  learn  to 
measure  or  apply  the  line  in  play  ;  and  the  future  warrior  should  learn  riding, 
or  some  other  exercise  for  amusement,  and  the  teacher  should  endeavor  to 
direct  the  children's  inclinations  and  pleasures,  by  the  help  of  amusements, 

*  Republic,  iv. :  §  425. 


224  TRUE  EDUCATION  PLAYFUL. 

to  their  final  aim  in  life.  .  .  .  The  soul  of  the  child  in  his  play  should 
be  trained  to  that  sort  of  excellence  in  which  when  he  grows  up  to  manhood 
he  will  have  to  be  perfected.* 

Plainly  the  natural  activity  of  infancy  is  play,  and  as  plainly 
the  only  possible  education  in  this  period  must  be  through 
play.  This  is  precisely  the  method  of  Mother  Nature.  She 
teaches  her  little  ones  all  the  marvellous  knowledge  which  they 
master  in  infancy  through  pure  play  of  body  and  of  mind. 

So  far  from  play  being  at  all  inconsistent  with  learning,  the 
best  work  in  education  does  in  fact  take  on  the  character  of 
play.  A  critic  as  unsentimental  as  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  lays 
down  the  law  that  all  education,  in  so  far  as  it  is  true,  tends  to 
become  play.  He  tests  every  method  by  this  criterion — is  it 
task  work  or  is  it  to  the  child  as  good  as  play  ?  It  is  our  igno- 
rance of  child  nature,  our  poverty  of  invention  and  our  me- 
chanicalness  of  method  which  leave  learning  mere  work.  All 
learning  ought  to  be  spontaneous,  joyous.  Calisthenics  is 
turning  into  a  semi-dancing,  to  the  music  of  the  piano  ;  natural 
sciences  are  coming  to  be  taught  through  excursions  in  the 
field  and  wood,  and  by  experiments  in  the  laboratory  ;  the 
dry  drill  of  languages  is  brightening  into  the  cheery  conversa- 
tion class  ;  the  catechism  in  the  Sunday-school  is  yielding 
room  for  the  music  of  hymns  and  carols.  There  is  nothing 
incompatible  between  the  merry  play  of  the  nursery  and  the 
school  into  which  we  would  turn  it,  if  only  we  can  be  cunning 
enough  to  devise  a  subtle  illusion  wherein,  as  the  children 
think  that  they  are  merely  playing,  we  shall  see  that  they 
are  also  learning.  Leaving  them  their  free,  spontaneous,  nat- 
ural impulses  of  playfulness,  we  may  then  lead  these  impulses 
up  into  a  system  which  shall,  with  benign  subtility,  unwittingly 

*  Laws,  i. :  §  643. 


FRCEBEL  FOUND  NATURE'S  SECRET.  22$ 

• 

to  the  children,  school  them  in  the  most  important  of  knowl- 
edges, train  them  in  the  most  valuable  of  powers,  fashion  them 
into  the  most  precious  of  habits,  open  within  them  the  deepest 
springs  of  eternal  life.  Only,  for  this  finest  and  divinest  of 
pedagogies  we  must,  as  the  greatest  of  teachers  has  taught  us, 
get  low  down  to  the  plane  of  the  little  ones,  and  ourselves  be- 
come as  children,  that  we  may  enter  the  kingdom  of  heaven. 
For  as  Sir  William  Hamilton,  and  longbeforehim  Lord  Bacon, 
pointed  out,  childlike  docility  of  soul  is  the  condition  of  enter- 
ing into  that  province  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  which  is  truth, 
as  well  as  into  that  province  which  is  goodness — the  secret  of 
philosophies  and  sciences  as  of  theologies  and  life. 

To  construct  the  true  system  of  child-schooling,  we  must  be 
humble  enough  and  wise  enough  to  go  to  Mother  Nature's 
dame  schools,  and  learn  her  science  and  art  of  infantile 
pedagogy.  If  some  genius,  child-hearted,  should  seriously  set 
himself  to  study  sly  old  Mother  Nature  in  her  most  trivial 
actions,  patiently  watching  her  most  cunningly  concealed  pro- 
cesses, he  might  steal  upon  her  thus  and  catch  the  secret  of  the 
Sphynx's  nurturing  by  play,  and  might  open  for  us  the  ideal 
education  for  the  early  years  of  childhood.  And  this  is  just 
what  Frcebel  did.  With  unwearied  patience,  and  in  the  very 
spirit  of  this  childlike  teachableness,  he  studied  the  plays  and 
songs  of  mothers  and  nurses  and  children,  when  left  to  their 
own  sweet  will,  till,  divining  at  last  the  principles  underlying 
these  natural  methods,  he  slowly  perfected  the  kindergarten  ; 
verifying  it  by  faithful  personal  experiment,  and  bequeathing, 
to  the  generations  that  should  come  after,  the  child-garden,  the 
sunny  shelter  wherein,  in  happy  play,  the  bodies,  minds  and 
souls  of  the  little  ones  should  beautifully  grow  out  into  health, 
intelligence  and  goodness. 

Visitors  in  a  kindergarten  watch  its  occupations,  and  leave 


226  THE  PLA  Y  OF  THE  POOR. 

it  with  the  somewhat  contemptuous  criticism — Oh  !  it  's  all 
very  nice  and  pleasant,  a  very  pretty  play. 

Were  this  all,  the  kindergarten  might  enter  a  strong  plea  on 
its  own  behalf.  In  the  foul  tenements  and  the  dirty  streets 
and  alleys  of  our  great  cities,  the  tainted  air  is  sapping  the 
vitality  of  the  children,  poisoning  their  blood,  sowing  their 
bodies  with  the  seeds  of  disease,  and  educating  helpless 
hosts  to  crowd  every  market-place  of  labor,  unfit  physically 
to  contend  in  the  struggle  for  existence.  In  these  dull  and  de- 
pressing surroundings,  a  gradual  stupefaction  is  stealing  over 
their  minds,  preparing  that  unintelligent  action  wherein  those 
whom  Carlyle  called  "  The  Drudges  "  are  taking  their  place  in 
society  as  the  human  tenders  of  our  superhuman  machines. 
In  the  sad  and  sombre  atmosphere  of  these  homes,  whose  joy- 
lessness  the  children  feel  unconsciously,  as  the  cellar-plant 
misses  the  light  and  shrivels  and  pales,  the  inner  spring  of 
energy  and  its  strength  of  character,  the  virtus  or  virtue  of  the 
human  being,  relaxes,  and  their  souls  become  flabby  and 
feeble.  Lacking  the  sunny  warmth  of  happiness  in  childhood, 
they  lack  through  life  the  stored-up  latencies  of  spiritual  heat 
which  feed  the  noblest  forces  of  the  being.  "  We  live  by  ad- 
miration, joy  and  love  "  Wordsworth  says  ;  which  implies  that 
we  may  die  by  joylessness. 

True,  the  child  nature  will  not  wholly  be  crushed  out,  and 
in  the  most  squalid  of  so-called  "homes,"  in  the  saddest 
streets,  it  will  play  in  some-wise,  though  it  is  literally  true  that 
not  a  few  have  their  playfulness  smothered  within  them.  But 
what  play  !  How  dull  and  dreary,  how  coarse  and  low  ;  an 
imitation,  as  the  great  Greek  said  of  many  of  the  stage  plays 
of  children  of  a  larger  growth,  "  of  the  evil  rather  than  of  the 
good  that  is  in  them  "  ;  a  veritable  mis-education  in  play,  as 
all  who  are  familiar  with  the  street-games  of  our  poor  quarters 


PURIFICATION  THROUGH  PLAY. 

too  sadly  know  ;  copying  the  vile  words  and  brutal  manners 
which  are  the  fashion  of  these  sections,  feeding  the  prurient 
fancies  which  Mr.  Ruskin  says  are  the  mental  putrescence 
gendered  of  physical  filth  in  the  overcrowding  together  of  human 
beings  ;  the  play,  not  as  of  the  children  of  the  Father  in 
Heaven,  in  the  Father's  House,  but  as  of  the  abducted  little 
ones  of  the  Heavenly  Father,  reared  in  the  purlieus  of  their 
false  father  the  Devil.  So  that  there  is  much  food  for  thought 
in  the  remark  contained  in  a  report  of  a  certain  children's 
asylum  in  London,  to  the  effect  that  the  first  thing  which  the 
matron  found  it  necessary  to  do  with  many  of  the  waifs 
brought  into  the  home  was  to  teach  them  to  play. 

If  only  the  little  ones,  in  their  most  susceptive  years,  are 
gathered  in  from  harmful  surroundings,  are  shielded  from 
scorching  heats  and  chilling  winds,  are  warded  from  the  wild 
beasts  that  lurk  around  the  valleys  where  the  tender  lambs  lie, 
though  in  pastures  dry  and  by  turbid  waters  ;  if  only  fenced 
in  thus  from  the  hearing  of  harsh,  foul  words,  and  from  the 
seeing  of  brutalizing  and  polluting  actions,  they  are  left  for  the 
best  hours  of  each  day  to  disport  themselves  in  innocent  and 
uncontaminating  happiness  amid  these  "  pretty  plays,"  it  must 
be  an  inestimable  gain  for  humanity.  For  thus,  in  its  native 
surroundings,  the  better  nature  of  each  child  has  a  chance  to 
grow,  and  the  angel  is  beforehand  with  the  beast,  when,  not  for 
an  hour  on  Sundays,  but  always,  "  their  angels  do  behold  the 
face  of  their  Father  in  Heaven." 

The  Lord  God  made  a  garden,  and  there  he  placed  the 
man — so  the  sacred  story  runs,  deep-weighted  with  its  parable 
of  life.  A  garden  for  the  soul,  bright  and  warm  in  soft,  rich 
happiness,  sunning  the  young  life  with  "  the  vital  feelings  of 
delight  " — this  is  the  ideal  state,  or,  as  we  now  phrase  it,  the 
normal  environment  for  child-growth.  As  much  of  the  condi- 


228  PHYSICAL  CULTURE  THROUGH  PLA  Y. 

tions  of  such  a  child-garden  as  can  be  secured  in  "  this  naughty 
world,"  is  the  first  desideratum  for  that  education  which  looks 
on  towards  the  second  Adam,  the  perfect  manhood,  the  meas- 
ure of  the  stature  of  the  fulness  of  Christ.  To  open  such 
child-gardens,  and  to  place  therein  loving,  sympathetic  women, 
to  mother  their  plays  and  keep  them  sweet  and  clean  and  gentle, 
this  were  to  do  for  the  growth  of  the  Christ  Child  a  work 
worthy  of  the  Christian  churches. 

But  this  is  far  from  all  the  good  of  the  child-garden.  It  is 
indeed  only  its  outer  and  superficial  aspect,  in  which,  even  be- 
fore its  most  carping  critics,  who  know  not  what  they  say  and 
so  are  forgiven,  Wisdom  is  justified  of  her  children.  Under- 
neath these  "  pretty  plays  "  there  is  a  masterly  guidance  of  the 
play-instinct,  in  the  direction  of  the  wisest  and  noblest  culture. 
They  are  faithful  reproductions  of  Mother  Nature's  schooling 
in  play,  and  every  part  of  the  carefully  elaborated  system  has 
a  direct  educative  value  in  one  of  the  three  lines  in  which,  as 
already  indicated,  our  State  system  seems  most  defective  ;  all 
three  of  which,  in  differing  degrees,  bear  upon  that  culture  of 
character  with  which  the  Church  has  need  to  busy  herself,  in 
disciplining  men  into  the  perfect  manhood  of  Christ. 

V. 

The  kindergarten-plays  form  a  beautiful  system  of  calisthen- 
ics, adapted  for  tender  years  and  filled  out  with  the  buoyancy 
of  pure  sportiveness.  The  marching,  the  light  gymnastic  ex- 
ercises, the  imitative  games,  with  the  vocal  music  accompany- 
ing them,  occupy  a  considerable  portion  of  the  daily  session  in 
an  admirable  physical  culture.  If  ordinary  attention  is  paid 
to  ventilation,  and  the  room  be,  as  it  ought  to  be,  a  sunny 
room,  guarded  against  sewer  gas  and  other  "  modern  conven- 


HEALTH  AND  CHARACTER.  22Q 

iences,"  this  physical  culture  ought  to  have  a  most  positive  and 
beneficent  influence  on  the  health  of  the  children.  If  a  good 
substantial  dinner  is  provided  for  them,  one  "  square  meal  "  a 
day  added  to  the  pure  air  and  judicious  exercise  ought  to  lay 
well  the  foundation,  not  alone  of  material,  but  of  moral  success 
in  life.  Health  is  the  basis  of  character  as  of  fortune.  There 
is  a  physiology  of  morality.  Some  of  the  grossest  vices  are 
largely  fed  from  an  impure,  diseased  and  enfeebled  physique. 
Drunkenness,  especially  among  the  poor,  is  to  a  large  extent 
the  craving  for  stimulation  that  grows  out  of  their  ill-fed,  ill- 
housed,  ill-clothed,  over-worked,  unsunned,  sewer-poisoned 
condition.  Lust  is  intensified  and  inflamed  by  the  tainted 
blood  and  the  over-taxed  nervous  system.  Purity  of  mind 
grows  naturally  out  of  purity  of  body.  Physiologists  under- 
stand these  facts  far  better  than  ethicists.  Then,  too,  lesser 
vices  are,  in  their  measure,  equally  grounded  in  abnormal 
physical  conditions.  Faults  of  temper,  irritability,  sullenness 
and  anger  are  intimately  connected  with  low  health,  the  under 
vitalized  state  which  characterizes  the  city  poor. 

Perfection  of  character  implies  a  happy  physical  organiza- 
tion, or  that  masterfulness  of  soul  which  is  the  rarest  of  gifts. 
Moderate  appetites,  a  serene  disposition,  generous  feelings, 
with  their  fellow  excellences,  may  be  the  victory  of  the  excep- 
tional saints  ;  but  they  may  also  be  the  natural  endowment  of 
the  healthy  common  people.  A  harmonious  body  will  subli- 
mate the  finer  qualities  of  the  soul.  In  man,  as  in  the  animals, 
when  we  see  such  physical  organizations  we  look  to  find  such 
moral  natures.  Axiomatic  as  this  is,  it  none  the  less  needs  to 
be  reiterated  in  the  ears  of  moral  and  religious  teachers.  To 
claim  this  is  to  raise  no  question  concerning  the  relative  pri- 
ority, in  genesis  or  in  importance,  of  body  or  of  mind.  Even 
if  the  body  be,  as  I  certainly  hold,  the  material  envelope 


230  INDUSTRIAL  EDUCATION  BEGUN. 

drawn  around  the  spirit,  moulded  and  fashioned  by  the  quality 
of  the  soul,  and  the  prime  concern  be  therefore  with  the  vital 
energy  and  purity  of  the  spirit,  still,  according  to  the  mate- 
rials supplied  in  food  and  air  will  the  body  thus  organized  be 
determined,  and  its  reflex  influence  tell  imperiously  on  the 
inner  being.  In  striving  to  grow  healthful  souls,  we  must,  to 
this  very  end,  grow  healthful  bodies.  While  feeding  assidu- 
ously the  forces  of  conscience  and  affection  and  will,  we  must 
largely  feed  them  indirectly,  by  filling  the  physical  reservoirs 
on  which  these  virtues  must  draw  with  sweet,  clean,  pure,  full 
tides  of  life.  The  Church  must  learn  a  lesson  from  its  Master, 
and  be  at  once  Good  Physician  and  Merciful  Savior  ;  restoring 
health  as  well  as  remitting  sin.  And  the  beginning  of  this 
dual  work  seems  to  me  to  lie  in  some  such  system  of  infantile 
physical  nurture,  carried  on  under  the  name  and  in  the  spirit 
of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  Our  churches  are  all  more  or  less 
busied  with  feeding  the  hungry,  and  otherwise  caring  for  the 
bodies  of  the  poor.  Will  it  not  tell  more  on  the  work  of  saving 
men  out  of  sin  to  put  the  money  spent  in  alms  to  adults — 
largely  misapplied  and  nearly  always  harmful  to  the  moral 
fibre — into  a  culture  of  health  for  the  children  ? 

VI. 

The  kindergarten-plays  form  a  most  wise  system  for  cultur- 
ing  the  powers  and  dispositions  which  lay  the  foundation  for 
successful  industrial  skill  ;  and  this  also  bears  directly  upon 
the  supreme  end  of  the  Church's  work — the  turning  out  of 
good  men  and  women. 

The  fundamental  position  of  the  kindergarten  in  a  system  of 
industrial  education  is  recognized  in  Germany,  and  must  soon 
be  perceived  here.  The  natural  instinct  of  childhood  to  busy 


BEARING  ON  LABOR  PROBLEM.  231 

itself  with  doing  something,  its  spontaneous  impulse  to  be 
making  something,  is  in  the  kindergarten  discerned  as  the 
striving  of  that  creative  power  which  is  mediately  in  man  as  the 
child  of  God.  It  is  utilized  for  the  purposes  of  education. 
Pricking  forms  of  geometrical  figures  and  of  familiar  objects 
on  paper,  weaving  wooden  strips  into  varied  designs,  folding 
paper  into  pretty  toys  and  ornaments,  plaiting  variegated  strips 
of  paper  into  ingenious  and  attractive  shapes,  modelling  in 
clay — these,  with  other  kindred  exercises,  "  pretty  plays  "  as 
they  all  seem,  constitute  a  most  real  education  by  and  for  work. 
By  means  of  these  occupations  the  eye  is  trained  to  quickness 
of  perception  and  accuracy  of  observation,  the  hand  to  deft- 
ness of  touch  and  skill  of  workmanship,  such  as  a  child  may  win, 
the  sense  of  the  beautiful  is  roused  and  cultivated,  the  fancy  is 
fed  and  the  imagination  is  inspired,  the  judgment  is  exercised 
and  strengthened,  originality  is  stimulated,  by  frequently  leav- 
ing the  children  to  fashion  their  own  designs,  while  habits  of 
industry  are  inwrought  upon  the  most  plastic  period  of  life, 
and  the  child  is  accustomed  to  find  his  interest  and  delight  in 
work,  and  to  feel  its  dignity  and  nobleness.  How  directly  all 
this  bears  upon  the  labor  problem,  the  vexed  question  of  phil- 
anthropy, is  patent  to  all  thoughtful  persons.  Every  market- 
place is  crowded  with  hungry  hosts,  bitterly  crying  "  no  man 
hath  hired  us,"  utterly  unconscious  that  no  man  can  hire  them 
save  as  a  charity.  For  skilled  workmen  and  work-women 
there  is  always  room  in  every  line.  Employers  are  importing 
trained  workers  in  most  industries,  while  all  around  lies 
this  vast  mass  of  people  who  never  were  taught  to  find  the  pride 
and  pleasure  of  life  in  doing  thoroughly  their  bit  of  daily  work. 
Simply  as  a  question  of  the  prevention  of  suffering,  the  im- 
mediate step  to  be  taken  by  those  who  would  wisely  help  their 
poorer  brothers  is  the  provision  of  schools  for  technical  train- 


232  BEARING  ON  VICE  AND  CRIME. 

ing  in  the  handicrafts,  such  as  exist,  notably,  in  Paris  and  in 
parts  of  Germany.  And,  as  the  place  to  begin  is  at  the  begin- 
ning, any  attempt  to  construct  such  a  system  of  industrial  edu- 
cation should  start  with  the  training  of  early  childhood,  in  the 
powers,  the  habits  and  the  love  of  work,  as  in  the  kindergar- 
ten. Miss  Peabody's  open  letter  to  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Thompson, 
arguing  for  the  kindergarten  as  a  potent  factor  in  the  solution 
of  the  labor  problem,  was  thoroughly  wise.  In  so  far  as  edu- 
cation solves  the  problem,  the  kindergarten  is  the  first  word 
of  the  answer  yet  spelled  out. 

But  the  labor  problem  is  not  only  the  dark  puzzle  of  want, 
it  is,  in  large  measure  also,  the  darker  puzzle  of  wickedness. 
Want  leads  to  very  much  of  the  wickedness  with  which  our 
courts  deal.  The  prevention  of  suffering  will  be  found  to  be 
the  prevention  of  a  great  deal  of  sinning.  How  much  of  the 
vice  of  our  great  cities  grows  directly  out  of  poverty,  and  the 
lot  that  poverty  finds  for  itself  !  Drunkenness  among  the  poor 
is  fed,  not  only  from  the  physical  conditions  above  referred  to, 
but  from  the  craving  for  social  cheer  that  is  left  unsupplied  in 
the  round  of  joyless  work  by  day,  and  dull,  depressing  recrea- 
tion in  the  evening.  Who,  that  knows  any  thing  of  the  most 
pitiable  class  which  our  communities  show,  does  not  know 
whence  and  how  their  ranks  are  largely  recruited  ?  To  eke 
out  the  insufficient  wages  of  unskilled  work,  there  is  one  re- 
source for  working  girls.  To  realize  the  daydream  of  the  fine 
lady  there  is  the  whispered  temptation  of  the  spirit  of  evil.  If 
the  Church  would  preserve  the  virtue  so  earnestly  inculcated 
upon  its  Sunday-school  children,  it  must  not  rest  with  inspiring 
the  right  spirit — it  must  imp'art  the  power  to  fashion  the  right 
conditions  for  virtuous  life.  It  must  not  only.teach  the  chil- 
dren to  pray  "  Lead  us  not  into  temptation  " — it  must  train 
them  so  as  to  lead  them  out  of  temptation. 


POSITIVE   INFLUENCES   ON  CHARACTER.  233 

Nor  is  it  only  a  negative  good  thus  won  for  character  in  lay- 
ing the  foundations  of  industrial  education.  The  more  manly 
a  boy  is  made,  the  stronger  he  becomes  for  all  good  aims,  the 
larger  is  the  store  of  reserved  forces  on  which  he  can  draw,  if  he 
really  seeks  to  win  a  noble  character.  The  more  of  "  faculty," 
as  our  New  England  mothers  called  efficiency,  that  a  girl  is  en- 
dowed with,  the  robuster  is  her  strengthfulness  of  soul ;  every 
added  power  garrisoning  her  spirit  with  a  larger  force  for  the 
resistance  of  evil.  The  mastery  of  the  body  and  the  culture 
of  mental  and  moral  qualities  won  in  the  process  of  developing 
a  skilled  worker,  finding  delight  and  pride  in  doing  the  daily 
work  well,  help  mightily  towards  the  supreme  end  of  life.  Pa- 
tience, perseverance,  strength  of  will,  sound  judgment,  the 
habit  of  going  through  with  a  thing — these  all  tell  on  the  great 
job  which  the  soul  takes  in  hand.  A  number  of  years  since, 
Cardinal  Wiseman's  lecture  on  The  Artist  and  the  Artisan 
called  the  attention  of  the  public  to  the  necessity,  not  only  on 
economic  but  on  ethical  grounds,  of  investing  labor  with  dig- 
nity and  of  clothing  it  with  delight ;  of  filling  out  the  common 
tasks  of  the  artisan  with  the  spirit  of  the  artist,  and  thus  trans- 
figuring manual  labor  into  a  spiritual  education.  Mr.  Ruskin 
has  been  for  years  preaching  sternly  this  new  gospel.  He  finds 
in  it  a  clue  to  the  discontent  and  consequent  demoralization  of 
the  mass  of  our  unintelligent  and  thus  uninterested  labor,  which 
turns  from  its  ordained  springs  of  daily  joy,  finding  them  empty, 
to  drink  of  the  turbid  streams  which  flow  too  near  by  every 
man. 

Again  the  ancient  parable  speaks  unto  us.  In  the  garden 
the  Lord  God  placed  the  man,  to  dress  it  and  to  keep  it.  The 
divine  education  of  man  is  through  some  true  work  given  him 
to  do.  While  he  does  that  heartily,  finding  his  delight  in  it,  all 
goes  well.  Sin  enters  when,  discontented  with  the  fruit  that 


234  MORAL    CULTURE   OF  KINDERGARTEN. 

springs  up  beneath  his  toil,  he  covets  that  which  grows  without 
his  effort.  The  use  of  the  world  as  abusing  it,  in  drunkenness 
and  lust  and  every  prostitution  of  natural  appetite,  is  found 
chiefly  in  the  classes  whose  joy  is  not  in  their  work  ;  either  as 
having  no  work  to  do,  or  as  despising  that  which  is  slavishly 
done. 

One  of  the  finest  and  healthiest  creations  of  George  Eliot 
was  Adam  Bede,  the  carpenter  whose  work-bench  was  his  les- 
son-book, whose  daily  tasks  formed  his  culture  of  character, 
and  whose  common  labor  of  the  saw  and  chisel  fashioned  thus 
a  noble  manhood.  Is  not  this  the  inner  meaning  of  the  fact 
that  the  world's  Saviour  came  not  as  the  princely  heir  of  the 
throne  of  the  Sakya-Munis,  in  the  splendid  palace  of  the  royal 
city  of  Kapilavastu,  but  as  the  carpenter's  son  in  the  cottage  of 
Nazareth  ?  So  that,  again,  we  see  the  need  that  the  churches 
should  make  a  child-garden,  and  place  the  infant  Adams 
therein,  to  dress  it  and  to  keep  it. 

VII. 

And  thus  we  come  at  last  to  the  crux  of  the  case.  The 
kindergarten  is  a  system  of  child  occupation,  a  curriculum  of 
play,  looking  straight  on  to  the  supreme  end  of  all  culture — 
character  ;  a  child-garden  whose  fruitage  is  in  the  spirit-flow- 
ering induced  therein,  beautiful  with  the  warm,  rich  colors  of 
morality,  fragrant  with  the  aromatic  incense  of  religion.  It  is 
essentially  a  soul-school,  reproducing  on  a  smaller  scale  God's 
plans  of  education  as  drawn  large  in  human  society. 

The  little  ones  just  out  of"  their  mother's  arms  are  gathered 
into  a  miniature  society,  with  the  proper  occupations  for  such 
tenders  years,  but  with  the  same  drawing  out  of  affection,  the 
same  awakening  of  kindly  feeling,  the  same  exercise  of  con- 


LEARNING  LAWS  OF  LIFE.  235 

science  in  ethical  discriminations,  the  same  development  of 
will,  the  same  formation  of  good  habits,  the  same  calling 
away  from  self  into  others,  into  the  large  life  of  the  community, 
which,  in  so  far  as  civilization  presents  a  true  society,  consti- 
tutes the  education  of  morality  in  "  Man  writ  large."  Morality 
is  essentially,  as  Maurice  called  it  in  his  Cambridge  lectures, 
"Social  Morality." 

An  order  is  established  round  about  the  little  ones,  environing 
them  with  its  ubiquitous  presence,  constraining  their  daily  habits, 
impressing  itself  upon  their  nature  and  moulding  them  while 
plastic  into  orderliness.  Certain  laws  are  at  once  recognized. 
They  are  expected  to  be  punctual  to  the  hour  of  opening  and 
regular  in  coming  day  by  day,  to  come  with  washed  hands  and 
faces  and  brushed  hair,  and  to  be  obedient  generally  to  the  kin- 
dergartner.  A  sense  of  law  thus  arises  within  their  minds.  It 
steals  upon  them  through  the  apparent  desultoriness  of  the 
occupations,  and  envelops  their  imaginations  in  that  mystery 
of  order  wherein,  either  in  nature  or  in  man,  is  the  world-wide, 
world-old  beginning  of  religion  ;  while  moulding  their  emo- 
tions and  impulses  into  the  habitudes  of  law  wherein  is  the 
universal  beginning  of  morality. 

All  of  the  special  habitu-des  thus  induced  tell  directly  and 
weightily  upon  the  formation  of  character  ;  so  much  so  that  it 
is  unnecessary  to  emphasize  the  fact,  except  perhaps  in  the 
case  of  the  habit  of  cleanliness  and  the  care  of  the  person  in 
general.  "Cleanliness  is  next  to  godliness,"  ran  the  old  saw, 
with  a  wisdom  beyond  the  thought  of  most  of  those  who  glibly 
quote  it  in  their  missions  of  charity  to  the  homes  (?)  of  poverty ; 
wherein  to  bring  any  true  cleanliness  needs  nothing  less  than  a 
new  education.  Cleanliness  is  essential  to  health,  the  lack  of 
which,  as  already  hinted,  has  so  much  to  do  with  the  tempta- 
tions of  the  poor.  It  is  equally  essential  to  that  self-respect 


236  SCHOOL   OF  MANNERS. 

wherein  ambition  and  enterprise  root,  and  out  of  which  is  fed 
that  sense  of  honor  which  so  mightily  supports  conscience  in 
the  cultured  classes.  It  is  also,  under  the  all-pervading  law  of 
correspondences  which  Swedenborg  has  done  most  to  open, 
inseparably  inter-linked  with  purity,  the  cleanliness  of  the  soul. 
Physiology  and  psychology  run  into  each  other  indistinguish- 
ably,  in  a  being  at  once  body  and  spirit  ;  so  that  the  state  of 
the  soul  is  expressed  in  the  condition  of  the  body,  and  is  in 
turn  largely  determined  by  it.  To  care  for  the  purity  and 
decency  of  the  temple  used  to  be  priestly  service.  To  care  for 
the  temple  of  the  Holy  Ghost  should  still  be  viewed  not  only 
as  the  task  of  the  sanitarian  sexton  but  as  the  charge  of  the 
spiritual  priesthood  ;  not  a  policing  of  the  building  but  a  re- 
ligious service  in  the  building,  an  instruction  in  purity,  a 
worship  of  the  Lord  and  Giver  of  Life. 

VIII. 

In  this  miniature  society  there  is  a  school  of  manners.  One 
smiles  in  reading  the  account  of  the  back-woo4s  log  school- 
house  where  the  gawky  lad  Abraham  Lincoln  was  taught  man- 
ners. But  indeed  is  not  this  instruction  bound  up  with  any 
training  of  character  ?  The  noblest  schools  of  manhood  have 
always  laid  great  stress  upon  manners  ;  whether  it  has  been 
the  Spartan  discipline  of  youth  in  respect  for  their  elders,  as 
the  expression  of  that  reverence  which  they  felt  to  be  the  bond 
of  society  ;  or  the  training  of  noble  lads  in  the  days  of  chivalry 
to  all  high-bred  courtesy  and  gentle-manliness,  as  the  soul  of 
the  true  knight  whose  motto"  should  be  noblesse  oblige.  Goethe, 
in  his  dream  of  the  ideal  education,  in  "  Wilhelm  Meister," 
made  the  training  of  youth  in  symbolic  manners  a  conspicuous 
feature.  So  great  a  legislator  as  Moses  was  not  above  giving 


IMPORTANCE  OF  MANNERS. 

orders  concerning  the  manners  of  the  people,  in  his  all-em- 
bracing scheme  of  state  education  :  "  Ye  shall  not  walk  in  the 
manners  of  the  nations  whom  I  cast  out  from  before  you."  So 
scientific  a  critic  as  Herbert  Spencer  finds  in  manners  the  out- 
come of  a  people's  social  state,  /.  <?.  of  its  moral  state.  True, 
the  manners  may  be  the  superficial  crust,  the  hardened  con- 
ventionalities which  neither  express  nor  cherish  the  inner 
spirit,  but  so  may  ritual  religion,  the  manners  of  the  soul  with 
God,  become  wholly  formal  and  dead.  Nevertheless  we  do 
not  decry  the  ritual  of  religion,  nor  should  we  any  more  de- 
preciate the  ritual  of  morality,  manners.  The  aim  of  the  true 
educator  should  be  to  find  the  best  ritual  of  morality  and 
spiritualize  it ;  presenting  it  as  always  lighted  up  with  the 
ethical  feeling  of  which  it  is  the  symbolic  expression.  The 
homes  of  really  cultured  and  refined  people  carry  on  this  work, 
among  the  other  educational  processes  which  Emerson  says 
are  the  most  important  as  being  the  most  unconscious. 

For  the  children  of  the  very  poor,  whose  homes  are  rough 
and  rude,  unsof  tened  by  grace,  unlighted  by  beauty,  uninspired 
by  an  atmosphere  of  gentleness,  unadorned  by  living  patterns 
of  cultured  courtesy,  the  need  is  supplied  in  the  kindergarten, 
the  society  of  the  petit  monde.  Herein  the  little  ones  have  be- 
fore them  daily,  in  the  persons  of  the  kindergartner  and  her  as- 
sistants, a  higher  order  of  cultivation,  all  whose  ways  take  on 
something  of  the  refinement  that  naturally  clothes  the  lady  ; 
and,  seen  through  the  atmosphere  of  affection  and  admiration 
which  surrounds  them,  these  habits  are  idealized  before  the 
little  ones  into  models  of  manners,  which  instinctively  waken 
their  imitativeness  and  unconsciously  refine  them  and  render 
them  gentle — a  very  different  thing  from  genteel.  To  the 
kindergartner  is  drawn  the  respect  and  deference  which  ac- 
custom the  children  to  the  spirit  that  a  certain  venerable 


0 
238  USE  OF  MUSIC. 

catechism  describes  as  the  duty  of  every  child  ;  an  ideal  we 
may  well  trust  to  be  not  yet  wholly  antiquated  in  these  days  of 
democracy,  when  every  man  thinks  himself  as  good  as  his 
neighbor  and  a  little  better  too,  if  the  hierarchy  that  we  find  in 
nature  is  still  any  type  of  the  divine  ordinations  or  orderings 
of  society  : 

My  duty  towards  my  neighbor  is  .       .to  love,  honor  and  succor 

my  father  and  mother,  to  honor  and  obey  the  civil  authority,  to  submit  my- 
self to  all  my  governors,  teachers,  spiritual  pastors  and  masters,  to  order 
myself  lowly  and  reverently  to  all  my  betters. 

Among  themselves,  in  the  daily  relations  of  the  kindergar- 
ten, in  its  plays  and  games,  the  children  are  taught  and  trained 
to  speak  gently,  to  act  politely,  to  show  courtesy,  to  allow  no 
rudeness  or  roughness  in  speech  or  action.  The  very  singing 
is  ordered  with  especial  reference  to  this  refining  influence, 
and  its  soft,  sweet  tones  contrast  with  the  noisy  and  boister- 
ous singing  of  the  same  class  of  children  in  the  Sunday-school, 
not  only  aesthetically  but  ethically. 

The  importance  placed  on  song  in  the  kindergarten,  where 
every  thing  that  can  be  so  taught  is  set  to  notes  and  sung  into 
the  children,  is  the  carrying  out  of  the  hints  given  by  the 
greatest  thinkers,  from  Plato  to  Goethe,  as  to  the  formative 
power  of  music.  One  who  knows  nothing  of  these  hints  of  the 
wise,  and  who  has  never  reflected  upon  the  subject,  in  watch- 
ing a  well-ordered  kindergarten  would  feel  instinctively  the 
subtle  influence  of  sweet  music,  in  softening  the  natures  of  the 
little  ones,  in  filling  them  with  buoyant  gladness,  in  leading 
them  into  the  sense  of  law,  in  harmonizing  their  whole  natures. 
I  remember  a  late  occasion  when  I  was  profoundly  impressed 
with  this  secret,  and  felt  the  words  of  the  masters,  long  familiar 
to  me,  open  with  unsuspected  depth. 


NATURE  OF  UNSELFISHNESS.  239 

IX. 

In  this  miniature  society  there  is  a  schooling  in  all  the  altru- 
istic dispositions — to  use  the  rather  pretentious  phraseology  of 
our  later  ethical  philosophers,  in  lieu  of  any  better  expression 
— an  education  of  the  individual  out  of  egoism,  self-ism,  and 
the  selfishness  into  which  it  rapidly  runs  ;  an  instruction  in  the 
principles  and  a  training  in  the  habits  of  those  duties  which 
each  one  owes  his  neighbor,  the  relationships  whose  due  ful- 
filment constitutes  morality.  As  in  the  association  which  civi- 
lization begins,  and  in  whose  increase  civilization  develops,  so 
in  this  miniature  society  individualities  are  brought  together 
from  their  separate  homes  in  a  common  life,  a  community 
whose  occupations,  aims  and  interests,  are  one  ;  where  the 
pleasures  of  each  one  are  bound  up  with  the  pleasures  of  his 
fellows,  his  own  desires  are  limited  by  the  desires  of  his  play- 
mates, his  self-regard  is  continually  brought  into  conflict 
with  the  resistance  offered  by  the  self-regard  of  others,  and  he 
is  taught  to  exercise  himself  in  thinking  of  his  companions, 
and  to  find  a  higher  delight  than  the  gratification  of  his  own 
whims  in  the  satisfaction  of  others'  wishes.  The  law  of  this 
little  society  is  the  Golden  Rule.  This  law  is  made  to  seem 
no  mere  hard  imposition  of  a  Power  outside  of  them,  which 
they  are  required  painfully  to  obey,  but  the  pleasant  prompting 
of  the  Good  Man  within  them — the  law  written  in  their  hearts 
— which  they  can  happily  obey,  finding  that  indeed  "  It  is 
more  blessed  to  give  than  to  receive."  The  little  ones  are  ac- 
customed, in  their  plays,  to  consult  each  other's  wishes,  and  to 
subordinate  their  individual  likings  to  the  liking  of  some 
friend.  "  What  shall  we  play  now  ?  "  says  the  kindergartner  ; 
and  up  goes  the  hand  of  some  quick-moving  child,  as  he  says  : 
"  Let  us  play  the  farmer."  "  Yes,  that  would  be  nice  ;  but 


240  DAIL  Y  LESSONS  IN  UNSELFISHNESS. 

don't  you  think  it  would  be  still  nicer  if  we  were  to  ask  Fanny 
to  choose  what  we  shall  play  ?  She  has  been  away,  you  know, 
and  she  looks  as  though  she  had  a  little  wish  in  her  mind.  I 
see  it  in  her  eyes.  Would  n't  it  be  the  happiest  thing  for  us 
all  if  we  let  our  dear,  little,  sick  Fanny  choose  ? "  And  this 
appeal  to  the  generosity  and  kindliness  instinct  in  all  children, 
but  repressed  in  all  from  the  start  by  the  barbarism  into 
which  the  neglected  nursery  runs,  and  unto  which  the  com- 
petitive school  system  aspires,  draws  forth  the  ready  response  : 
"  O  Yes  !  let  Fanny  choose."  Thus  the  little  ones  have  their 
daily  lessons,  changing  in  form  with  each  day,  but  recurrent 
in  some  form  on  every  day,  in  the  meaning  of  the  Master's 
word  and  the  spirit  of  his  life. 

By  the  side  of  Johnnie,  who  is  bright  and  quick,  and  is  fin- 
ishing his  clay  modelling  easily,  sits  Eddie,  who  is  slow  of 
mind  and  dull  of  vision  and  awkward  of  hand,  and  can't  get 
his  bird's  nest  done.  The  k^ndergartner  can  of  course  help 
him,  but  a  whisper  to  Johnny  sets  his  fingers  at  work  with 
Eddie's,  in  the  pleasure  of  kindly  helpfulness,  and  the  dull 
child  is  helped  to  hopeful  action,  while  the  bright  child  is 
helped  to  feel  his  ability  a  power  to  use  for  his  brother's 
good.  If  any  joy  or  sorrow  comes  to  one  of  the  little  com- 
pany, it  is  made  the  occasion  of  calling  out  the  friendly  and 
fraternal  sympathy  of  all  the  child-community.  "Have  you 
heard  the  good  news,  children  ?  Mary  has  a  dear  little  baby- 
brother,  ever  so  sweet  too  !  Are  n't  we  all  glad  ? "  And 
every  face  brightens,  and  all  eyes  sparkle  with  the  quick  thrill 
of.  a  common  joy.  "  Poor,  dear  little  Maggie  !  Is  n't  it  too  bad  ! 
Her  papa  is  very  sick,  and  she  can't  come  to  kindergarten  to- 
day. She  is  sitting  at  home,  so  sad,  because  her  papa  suf- 
fers so  much,  and  her  mamma  is  so  anxious.  Don't  we  all 
feel  sorry  for  her  ?  And  sha'n't  we  send  word  to  her  by  Bes- 


A    SCHOOL    OF  SOCIAL  MORALITY.  241 

sie,  who  lives  right  near  her,  that  we  all  feel  so  sorry,   and 
that  we  hope  her  papa  will  soon  be  well  ?  " 

Scarcely  a  day  passes  without  some  such  occasion  of  calling 
out  the  sympathies  of  the  individual  children  into  the  sense  of 
a  larger  life  in  common,  in  which  they  are  members  one  of 
another,  and  share  each  other's  joys  and  sorrows.  "  Bear  ye 
one  another's  burdens,  and  so  fulfil  the  law  of  Christ,"  may 
not  be  written  upon  the  walls  of  the  kindergarten,  but  is  writ- 
ten, day  by  day,  through  it  in  living  lines  upon  the  inner  walls 
of  the  living  temples  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  where  it  is  read  by  the 
spirit. 

X. 

In  manifold  ways,  each  day  also  brings  opportunities  of  im- 
pressing upon  the  little  ones  the  mutually  limiting  rights  of  the 
members  of  a  community,  the  reciprocal  duties  that  each  one 
owes  to  every  other  one  with  whom  he  has  relations,  and  to 
enforce  the  lesson,  "  No  man  liveth  unto  himself."  A  sense 
of  corporate  life  grows  up  within  this  miniature  community, 
which  floats  each  individual  out  upon  the  currents  of  a  larger 
and  nobler  being.  Each  action  shows  its  consequences  upon 
others,  and  thus  rebukes  selfishness.  Each  little  being  is 
bound  up  with  other  beings,  with  the  whole  society,  and  his 
conduct  is  seen  to  affect  the  rest,  to  change  the  atmosphere  of 
the  whole  company.  Injustice  is  thus  made  to  stalk  forth  in 
its  own  ugliness,  falsehood  to  look  its  native  dishonor,  and 
meanness  to  stand  ashamed  of  itself  in  the  condemning  looks 
of  the  little  community.  Justice  rises  into  nobleness,  truth 
into  sacredness,  generosity  into  beauty,  kindness  into  charming 
grace,  as  the  forms  of  these  virtues  are  mirrored  in  the  radiant 
eyes  of  the  approving  company.  That  very  deep  word  of  the 
Apostle,  "  Let  him  that  stole  steal  no  more  ;  for  we  are  mem- 


242  NO  LOSS  OF  INDIVIDUALITY. 

bers  one  of  another,"  grows  in  such  a  child-community  into  a 
living  truth,  a  principle  of  loftiest  ethics  ;  and,  in  the  sense  of 
solidarity,  the  feeling  of  organic  oneness,  the  highest  joy  of 
goodness  and  the  deepest  pain  of  badness  grow  out  of  the  per- 
ception of  the  influence,  mysterious  and  omnipotent,  which 
each  atom  exerts  on  the  whole  body,  for  weal  or  for  woe,  in 
the  present  and  in  the  future. 

And  into  this  topmost  reach  of  social  morality  the  little 
community  of  the  kindergarten  begins  to  enter,  blessing  its 
individual  members  and  preparing  through  them  the  soil  for  a 
higher  social  state,  that  life  in  common  of  the  good  time 
coming. 

This  social  morality  is  cultured  at  no  cost  to  the  individu- 
ality. The  sense  of  a  life  in  common  is  not  made  to  drive  out 
the  sense  of  a  life  in  separateness,  in  which  each  soul  stands 
face  to  face  with  the  august  Form  of  Ideal  Goodness,  to  answer 
all  alone  to  the  Face  which  searches  it  out  in  its  innermost 
being,  and  wins  it  to  seek  Him  early  and  to  find  Him.  The 
true  kindergartner  is  very  scrupulous  about  lifting  the  respon- 
sibility, in  any  way,  from  the  conscience  of  the  child.  In  these 
appeals  to  the  better  nature  of  all,  it  is  that  better  nature  of 
the  child  which  is  left  to  decide  the  question,  only  helped  by 
the  way  in  which  the  kindergartner  puts  the  case.  Even  in  a 
case  of  disobedience  to  her  command,  she  is  careful  not  so 
much  to  be  obeyed  as  to  be  obeyed  by  the  self-won  victory  of 
the  little  rebel,  who  is  given  time  to  get  over  his  sulk  and  to 
come  to  himself,  and  so  to  arise  and  say,  in  his  own  way,  "  I 
have  sinned."  Nothing  in  the  whole  system  is  more  beautiful 
than  this  effort  to  have  the  child  conquer  himself. 

The  appeal  is  always  through  the  sympathies,  the  affections, 
the  imagination,  to  the  sense  of  right  in  each  child,  to  the  veiled 
throne  where,  silent  and  alone,  Conscience  sits  in  judgment. 


EDUCATION  IN  LOVE.  243 

Only,  it  is  an  appeal  that  is  carried  up  to  this  final  tribunal  by 
the  persuasive  powers  of  social  sympathy,  the  approbation  of 
one's  fellows,  the  judgment  in  its  favor  already  pronounced  by 
speaking  faces  and  glowing  eyes.  As  society  affords  the 
sphere  for  the  development  of  conscience,  so  it  furnishes  the 
most  subtle  and  powerful  motives  to  conscience,  and  the  in- 
dividual life  is  perfected  in  the  life  in  common. 

XI. 

An  atmosphere  of  love  is  thus  breathed  through  the  little 
society  of  the  kindergarten,  under  which  all  the  sweetness  and 
graciousness  of  the  true  human  nature,  the  nature  of  the  Christ  in 
us,  opens  and  ripens  in  beauty  and  fragrance.  All  morality  sums 
itself  up  into  one  word — love.  "  Owe  no  man  any  thing  but  to 
love  one  another ;  for  he  that  loveth  another  hath  fulfilled  the 
law.  For  this,  Thou  shalt  not  commit  adultery,  Thou  shalt 
not  kill,  Thou  shalt  not  steal,  Thou  shalt  not  bear  false  wit- 
ness, Thou  shalt  not  covet  ;  and  if  there  be  any  other  com- 
mandment, it  is  briefly  comprehended  in  this  saying,  namely, 
Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself.  Love  worketh  no  ill 
to  his  neighbor,  therefore  love  is  the  fulfilling  of  the  law." 

To  teach  children  to  really  love  one  another,  to  cherish 
kindly,  generous,  unselfish  dispositions  towards  each  other,  and 
to  act  upon  those  dispositions,  is  to  write  the  whole  code  of 
conduct  in  the  heart.  And,  plainly,  this  is  not  a  matter  for 
mere  precept*  It  is  not  to  be  effected  by  the  most  eloquent 
exhortations  of  Sunday-school  teachers  or  of  pastors.  It  is  a 
spirit  to  be  breathed  within  the  very  souls  of  the  little  ones,  in 
their  tenderest  years,  from  an  atmosphere  charged  with  loving- 
ness.  This  is  what  makes  a  loving  mother  in  the  home  the 
true  teacher  of  character  in  the  true  school,  a  means  of  grace 


244  AN  ATMOSPHERE   OF  LOVE. 

vastly  more  influential  than  the  most  perfect  Sunday-school 
or  the  most  wonderful  church.  The  kindergarten  is  only  a 
vicarious  mothering  for  those  whose  homes  lack  this  divine 
nurturing,  a  brooding  over  the  void  of  unformed  manhood 
and  womanhood  by  a  loving  woman,  bringing  order  out  of  the 
chaos  and  smiling  to  see  it  "very  good."  Nothing  that  can 
help  this  quickening  of  love  is  neglected  in  the  kindergarten. 
The  daily  work  is  wrought  with  some  special  aim  in  view,  some 
thought  of  affection  in  the  heart.  It  is  to  be  a  gift  for  father 
or  mother,  brother  or  sister,  aunt  or  uncle,  or  perhaps,  un- 
known to  them,  for  kindergartner  or  for  pastor. 

As  I  write,  I  lift  my  eyes  to  look  at  a  horse  pricked  out  on 
white  paper  and  framed  with  pink  paper  strips,  wrought,  with 
what  patient  toil  of  loving  fingers,  by  the  cutest  of  little  darkies, 
the  baby  of  our  kindergarten,  for  his  pastor,  and  duly  pre- 
sented to  me  on  our  last  Christmas  celebration.  Thus  the 
daily  toil  weaves  subtle  fibres  of  affection  around  the  heart, 
and  models  the  soul  into  shape  of  gracious  love. 

All  this  beautiful  moral  culture  is  wrought  through  the  happy 
play  of  the  child-garden,  with  a  minimum  of  talk  about  the  obli- 
gatoriness  of  these  simple  virtues,  and  with  a  maximum  of  in- 
fluences surrounding  the  children  to  make  them  feel  the  happi- 
ness and  blessedness  of  being  good.  The  atmosphere  is  sunny 
with  joy.  The  constant  aim  of  the  kindergarten  is  to  fill  all 
with  happiness.  Cross  looks  and  hard  words  are  banished. 
The  law  of  kindness  rules,  the  touch  of  love  conquers.  No 
work  is  allowed  to  become  a  task.  It  is  all  kept  play,  and  play 
whose  buoyancy  each  child  is  made  to  feel  inheres  in  the  spirit 
of  kindness  and  affection  and  goodness  which  breathes  through 
the  kindergarten.  They  are  all  trying  to  do  right,  to  speak  the 
truth,  to  show  kindness,  to  feel  love,  and  therefore  all  are 
happy.  Now  to  be  thoroughly  happy,  overflowingly  happy, 


SOUL  SUNSHINE— RELIGIOUS  CULTURE.  245 

happy  with  a  warmth  and  cheeriness  that  lights  up  life  as  the 
spring  sun  lights  up  the  earth — this  is  itself  a  culture  of  good- 
ness. It  is  to  fill  these  tender  beings  with  stores  of  mellow 
feeling,  of  rich,  ripe  affection,  which  must  bud  and  blossom 
into  the  fruits  of  the  Spirit  which  are  all  but  varieties  of 
love. 

"  Virtue  kindles  at  the  touch  of  joy," 

wrote  Mrs.  Browning  ;  knowing  well  whereof  she  wrote.  Joy- 
ousness,  pure  and  innocent  and  unselfish,  overflowing  all 
around  like  the  rich  gladness  of  the  light,  is  the  very  life  of 
the  children  of  God.  "  Thou  meetest  him  that  rejoiceth  and 
worketh  righteousness."  The  "vital  feelings  of  delight,"  of 
which  Wordsworth  spake,  feed  the  vital  actions  of  righteousness, 
in  the  doing  of  which  God  is  met.  The  happiness  that  the 
little  ones  have,  whose  angels  stand  ever  before  the  face  of 
their  Father  in  Heaven,  must  be  something  like  the  pleasures 
which  are  at  God's  right  hand  for  evermore,  the  joys  which 
express  and  which  feed  the  purity  and  the  goodness  of  the 
children  of  the  Heaven-Father. 

Is  not  an  institution  which  provides  for  the  cultivation  of 
such  social  morality,  under  such  an  atmosphere  of  sunny  joy,  a 
true  child-garden  for  the  growth  of  the  soul  and  its  blossoming 
in  beauty  ? 

XII. 

What  is  thus  true  of  the  kindergarten  as  a  school  of  morality 
is  equally  true  of  it  as  a  school  of  religion.  In  carrying  on 
such  a  culture  of  character  as  that  described  above,  the  kinder- 
garten would  be  doing  a  religious  work  even  though  no  formal 
word  were  spoken  concerning  religion.  It  would  be  culturing 
the  spirit  out  of  which  religion  grows. 


246  RELIGION  IS  LOVE. 

Love  is  the  essence  of  religion.  All  forms  of  religion,  in 
their  highest  reach,  express  this  spirit.  Christianity  positively 
affirms  it.  The  very  being  of  the  Source  and  Fount  of  all 
spiritual  life  is  essential  love.  "  God  is  Love."  He  who 
supremely  manifested  God  to  man  summed  the  whole  law  in 
two  commandments,  the  dual-sphered  forms  of  this  life  of  love 
in  man — "  Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God  with  all  thy  heart 
and  with  all  thy  soul  and  with  all  thy  mind.  This  is  the  first 
and  great  commandment.  And  the  second  is  like  unto  it ; 
Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself."  In  the  order  of 
nature,  love  to  our  neighbor  precedes  and  prepares  for 
love  to  God.  Mother  and  father,  brother  and  sister  awaken 
love  in  us,  drawing  it  out  toward  themselves,  and  thus  educat- 
ing the  soul  to  flow  up  in  love  unto  the  life  of  which  these 
earthly  affections  are  seen  to  be  but  the  shadows.  Human 
affections  are  the  syllables  which,  when  put" together,  spell  out 
the  love  of  God.  They  are  the  strands  which  twine  together 
into  the  "  bands  of  a  man,  the  cords  of  love  "  wherewith 

"  The  whole  round  earth  is  every  way 

Bound  by  gold  chains  about  the  feet  of  God." 

They  are  pulse  beats  in  the  earthly  members  of  the  Eternal 
Life,  which 

"  Throbs  at  the  centre,  heart -heaving  alway  "  ; 
the  Life 

"  Whose  throbs  are  love,  whose  thrills  are  songs." 

The  love  of  the  dear  ones  in  the  home  is  not  something  other 
than  the  love  of  God,  to  be  "contrasted  or  even  compared  with 
the  love  which  we  cherish  towards  the  Father  in  Heaven  ;  it  is 
part  of  that  love,  its  lower  forms,  through  which  alone  we 
climb  up  to  a  St.  Augustine's  passionate  "  What  do  I  love 


CHILD  RELIGION  FED.  247 

when  I  love  Thee,  O  my  God  ? "  "  He  that  loveth  not  his 
brother  whom  he  hath  seen,  how  can  he  love  God  whom  he 
hath  not  seen."  Every  true  love  is  the  respiration  from  the 
soul  of  man  of  the  inspiration  of  God  himself,  the  Essential 
and  Eternal  Love.  Could  the  Church  succeed  in  making  its 
members  so  live  that  it  should  again  be  said,  "  See  how  these 
Christians  love  one  another,"  the  world  would  own  a  new  in- 
spiration of  religious  life,  a  new  revelation  of  religious  truth. 
If  the  kindergarten  succeed  in  making  a  child-society  filled 
with  gentle,  kindly  affection,  pervaded  with  the  spirit  of  love, 
we  should  rest  persuaded  that  herein  it  was  working  the 
"  preparation  of  the  heart  "  for  the  higher  love,  to  open  duly 
in  the  temple-consciousness — "  Wist  ye  not  that  I  must  be  in 
my  Father's  ?  "  In  the  flowing  up  of  these  springs  of  human 
love,  we  should  recognize,  deep  down  below  consciousness,  the 
tiding  of  the  Eternal  Love,  the  well  of  water  springing  up 
within  them  unto  everlasting  life. 

But,  indeed,  there  need  be  no  lack  of  direct  words  of  the 
Heavenly  Father  and  to  Him,  such  as  make  up  what  we  ordi- 
narily think  of  as  religious  education.  The  kindergarten  pro- 
vides for  a  natural  child-religion,  in  its  talks  and  songs  and 
simple  prayers.  In  the  games  wherein  the  little  ones  are 
familiarized  with  the  processes  by  which  man's  wants  are  sup- 
plied, their  minds  are  led  up  to  see  the  Fatherly  Love  which  thus 
cares  for  the  children  of  earth.  Awe,  reverence,  worship, 
gratitude,  affection,  are  suggested  and  inspired,  and  the  child- 
soul  is  gently  opened  towards  the  Face  of  Holy  Love  shining 
down  over  it,  casting  its  bright  beams  deep  within  the  innocent 
mind  in  thoughts  and  feelings  which  we  dimly  trace.  Of  this 
speech  about  God  there  is  a  sparing  use,  according  to  the 
wisdom  of  the  truest  teachers. 

George   MacDonald   tells  how   Ranald  Bannerman's  father 


248  A  SPIRITUAL  A  TMOSPHERE. 

never  named  GOD,  till  one  rare,  high  moment,  when  nature 
spread  her  spell  of  gladsome  awe,  and  invited  the  utterance  of 
the  ineffable  name  and  the  revelation  which  the  marriage  of 
word  and  work  should  make. 

Glib  garrulity  about  God  is  the  vice  of  most  religious  teach- 
ing, "falsely  so  called,"  the  bungling  job-work  of  spiritual 
tyros  who  never  should  be  set  upon  so  fine  a  task  as  the  culture 
of  the  soul.  The  simple  child-songs,  full  of  the  spirit  of  re- 
ligion, with  so  little  about  it,  delicately  uplifting  the  thought 
of  the  little  ones  to  the  Fatherly  Goodness  ;  the  sacred  word 
of  child-hearted  prayer  in  its  one  perfect  form,  "  Our  Father 
who  art  in  heaven  "  —  as  the  old  rubric  would  have  ordered 
it,  "  said  or  sung  "  in  the  opening  of  the  daily  session  ;  these 
fine  whispers  of  the  spirit  envelop  the  kindergarten  in  a  gra- 
cious sense  of  God,  subtle  as  the  atmosphere,  and  like  it  per- 
vasive and  all-inspiring.  Froebel  was  profoundly  religious 
himself,  and  sought  to  make  his  new  education  above  all  a 
true  religious  culture.  If  it  had  stopped  short  of  this,  it 
would  have  been  to  him  maimed  and  mutilated.  But  he  was 
too  humbly  true  to  Nature's  mothering  to  spoil,  in  trying  to 
improve,  her  gentle,  quiet,  unobtrusive  ways  of  opening  the 
child-soul  to  God.  He  knew  that  the  crowning  consciousness- 
of  God  in  the  child-soul  must  bide  its  time,  and  cannot  be 
forced  without  deadly  injury.  He  knew  that  the  twelve  years 
in  the  home  go  before  the  hour  in  the  temple  ;  that  they  are  the 
rootings  for  that  beautiful  flowering. 

To  create  such  an  atmosphere  around  the  tender  buds  of 
being,  and  enswathe  them,  ere  they  consciously  open  to  know 
God,  with  the  felt  presence  of  a  Fatherly  Goodness  ;  to  teach 
the  little  ones  their  duties  one  to  another  as  brothers,  in  such 
wise  that  they  shall  come  to  recognize  those  duties  as  the  mu- 
tual obligations  of  the  common  children  of  this  Fatherly 


THE  FOUNDATION  OF  EDUCATION.  249 

Love  ;  to  guide  their  inquiring  minds  to  see  through  all  the 
law  and  wisdom  and  beneficence  of  nature  the  care  of  this 
Fatherly  Providence  ;  to  lift  their  tiny  hands  in  simple,  daily 
prayer  to  this  Fatherly  Worshipfulness — is  not  this  a  beautiful 
culture  of  essential  religion  in  its  child-stage  ? 

XIII. 

Combining  this  physical,  intellectual,  industrial,  moral  and 
religious  culture,  does  not  the  kindergarten  become  a  veritable 
child-garden,  where  the  tender  saplings  of  the  Heavenly 
Father  are  well  started  towards  symmetric  wholeness,  or  holi- 
ness ?  Is  it  not  the  cradle  for  the  infancy  of  the  Coming  Man, 
in  whose  unspoiled  childhood,  growing  normally  towards  per- 
fection, "  The  White  Christ,"  as  the  Norsemen  called  him,  the 
pure,  clean,  holy  image  of  the  Father  in  the  Son,  is  to  be  "  formed 
in  "  men,  to  be  "  born  in  "  them,  till  "  we  all  come  to  a  perfect 
man,  to  the  measure  of  the  stature  of  the  fulness  of  Christ  "  ? 

I  make  no  exaggerated  plea  for  the  kindergarten.  To  its 
defects  and  limitations  I  am  not  wholly  blind.  Its  imperfec- 
tions, however,  are  not  serious  ;  its  limitations  form  no  valid 
objection  to  it.  It  is  confessedly  only  a  stage  in  education, 
not  a  complete  system.  But  that  stage  is  the  all-important  one 
of  the  foundation.  True — "  and  pity  't  is,  't  's  true  " — we  have 
no  series  of  such  child-gardens,  transplanting  the  children, 
stage  by  stage,  after  nature's  plans,  on  into  manhood  or 
womanhood.  After  this  fair  beginning,  we  have  often  to 
transfer  them  to  schools  that  are  largely  uncongenial,  not  only 
to  the  best  life  of  body  and  mind,  but  alas  !  of  the  soul  also  ; 
where  competition  and  rivalry,  selfish  ambition  for  priority 
of  place,  hard  law  and  a  stern  spirit,  chill  and  deaden  the  life 
so  graciously  begun,  and  prepare  the  children  for  the  false 


250  ITS  POWER  A  PERSONALITY. 

society  of  strife  and  selfishness,  "  the  world "  which  if  any 
man  love,  "  the  love  of  the  Father  is  not  in  him."  Nevertheless, 
the  foundation  of  the  true  education  must  be  laid,  in  the  as- 
surance that  if  it  be  well  laid  the  life  will  plumb  somewhat 
truer,  and  that  upon  it,  shaped  and  ordered  by  its  better 
form,  string  by  string,  the  layers  of  the  nobler  education  must 
rise,  lifting  humanity  towards  that  blessed  society  yet  to  be 
built  upon  the  new  earth,  over  which  the  new  heavens  arch. 
Its  mechanique,  however  wonderfully  wise,  doubtless  carries 
within  it  no  regenerating  power,  unless  a  living  soul  vitalizes 
it.  As  a  mechanism,  it  seems  to  me  the  most  perfect  that 
educators  have  developed.  But  the  finest  thing  about  it  is  the 
imperious  demand  which  it  makes  for  a  true  personality  at  the 
centre  of  its  curious  coil.  No  other  system  of  education  is  so 
insistent  upon  the  necessity  of  a  soul  within  the  system,  de- 
pends so  absolutely  upon  the  personal  influence  of  the  teacher, 
or  recognizes  this  subordination  of  method  to  spirit  so 
frankly.  It  claims  for  itself  that  its  mechanism  provides  a  true 
means  for  the  exercise  of  personal  influence  upon  the  lives  of 
the  little  ones,  prevents  the  waste  of  misdirected  effort,  and  the 
worse  than  waste  which  such  labor  always  leaves.  It  then 
seeks  and  trains  the  true  mothering  woman,  sympathizing 
with  children,  drawing  out  their  confidence  and  affection,  apt 
to  teach,  quick  to  inspire,  an  over-brooding  presence  of  love, 
creative  of  order  in  the  infantile  chaos.  The  machinery  can 
be  worked  in  a  woodenish  way  by  any  fairly  intelligent  woman. 
It  can  be  successfully  worked  to  accomplish  its  grand  aim  only 
by  a  noble  woman,  a  vitalizing  personality.  The  kindergarten 
is  the  wonderful  body  of  culture  whose  animating  soul  is  the 
kindergartner.  Its  power  is  that  on  which  Christ  always  re- 
lied, that  on  which  the  Church  still  leans — personal  influence 
upon  individuals  ;  and  its  sphere  for  that  influence  is  the  most 


RESUM&  OF  CLAIMS.  2$l 

plastic  period  of  all  life.  The  women  whom  the  kindergarten 
seeks  to  win  to  its  cause  are  those  who  come  to  its  work  in  this 
spirit ;  women  who  want  not  only  an  avocation,  a  means  of 
winning  bread  and  butter,  but  a  vocation,  a  calling  from  God 
for  man. 

My  claim  for  the  kindergarten  is  that  it  is  a  wonderfully 
wise  system  for  utilizing  the  most  valuable  years  of  childhood, 
hitherto  left  to  run  to  waste,  in  a  beautiful  provision  for  turn- 
ing the  play  instinct  of  childhood  into  a  genuine  education  of 
body,  mind  and  soul ;  that  it  lays  the  foundation  for  a  really 
integral  culture,  a  culture  of  the  whole  man,  /.  e.  of  holiness  ; 
that  it  specially  supplements  the  State  system  of  education  in 
the  points  where  it  is  most  lacking,  the  nurture  of  health  and 
industrial  training  ;  that,  in  so  far  as  it  does  all  this,  it  com- 
mends itself  most  strongly  to  the  churches  as  a  branch  of  their 
work,  the  work  which  is  on  every  hand  tending  towards  educa- 
tion, as  the  only  means  of  preventing  those  unfavorable  con- 
ditions for  character  that  the  poor  find  surrounding  them,  in 
their  low  health  and  their  incompetency  for  skilled  work  ;  and 
that,  above  all  this,  it  avowedly  seeks,  and  is  admirably  adapted 
to  secure,  an  initial  culture  of  morality  and  religion  patterned 
upon  nature's  own  methods,  /.  c.  God's  own  plans,  whose  frui- 
tion, if  ever  carried  on  through  successive  stages  into  adult 
life,  would  be  that  society  of  the  Brotherhood  of  Man,  in  the 
Family  of  the  Heavenly  Father,  which  is  the  ideal  unto  which 
the  Church  slowly  works,  the  Kingdom  of  God  upon  earth. 

If  the  Church  be  sent  to  heal  all  manner  of  diseases,  physi- 
cal, mental  and  moral,  in  the  spirit  and  power  of  its  Lord,  by 
disciplining  men  into  the  name — the  truth,  the  life — of  that 
Head  of  the  new  Humanity,  then  is  church  work  the  educa- 
tion of  men  and  women  towards  that  ideal  of  St.  Paul — "  Till 
we  all  come  in  the  unity  of  the  faith  and  of  the  knowledge  of 


252  FUNDAMENTAL  CHURCH  WORK. 

the  Son  of  God,  to  a  perfect  man,  to  the  measure  of  the  stature 
of  the  fulness  of  Christ." 

And  for  this  task  of  Christian  education,  wherein  lies  church 
work,  the  foundation  must  be  laid — next  above  the  lowest 
string  in  the  building,  the  Family,  and  in  its  place  where  it 
does  not  truly  exist — in  some  system  of  child-culture,  under 
the  laws  of  nature  and  in  the  Spirit  of  Christ.  The  only  ap- 
proach to  such  a  system  which  the  world  holds  to-day  is  the 
kindergarten.  Therefore,  it  may  well  claim  to  be  the  funda- 
mental church  work,  the  infant  school  of  the  future,  the 
child-garden  wherein  the  little  ones  of  the  poor  shall  grow  day 
by  day  in  body,  mind  and  soul,  towards  the  pattern  of  all 
human  life. 

The  day  is  not  far  off  when  our  present  pretence  of  Chris- 
tian education  in  the  Sunday-  school  will  be  viewed  as  the 
mere  makeshift  of  a  time  of  zeal  without  knowledge,  a  pro- 
visional agency  awaiting  the  coming  of  a  real  soul-school  ; 
always  perhaps  to  be  continued  for  certain  fine  influences  in- 
herent in  it,  but  at  best  only  a  supplement  to  the  true  culture 
of  character  ;  needing  to  be  moulded  upon  that  wiser  system. 
The  day  is  not  far  off  when  every  church  aiming  to  carry  on 
any  real  mission  work  will  have,  as  the  foundation  for  what- 
ever system  of  schools  it  may  be  trying  to  build  up,  a  Free 
Kindergarten.  Meanwhile,  every  church  founding  one  becomes 
a  pioneer  of  the  true  church  work. 

The  thoroughly  religious  tone  of  this  work  can  be  secured, 
if  any  churches  distrust  the  general  supply  of  kindergartners, 
by  the  pastor's  selecting  one  of  those  blessed  women  whom  al- 
most every  congregation  develops — apt  to  teach,  full  of  love  to 
children  and  to  God — and  persuading  her  to  train  as  a  kinder- 
gartner,  and  then  take  charge  of  the  parochial  kindergarten. 

True,  this  work  will  be  costly  in  comparison  with  the  poor 


STATE   rs.  CHURCH  ACTION.  253 

work  that  is  now  done  so  cheaply  and  with  such  apparently 
large  results.  But  as  the  real  spirit  of  love  to  God  and  man 
inspires  the  activity  of  the  churches,  and  a  true  discernment 
of  what  is  needing  to  be  done  grows  upon  them,  the  cackling 
and  crowing  of  congregations  over  their  ever-to-be-so-much- 
admired  works  will  give  place  to  a  quieter  and  humbler  feel- 
ing ;  and  churches  will  be  glad  to  do  some  smaller  work,  as 
men  judge,  if  so  it  may  only  prove  true  work  for  man,  well 
done  in  the  Spirit  of  Christ ;  and  will  rest  content  to  sink  a 
thousand  dollars  a  year  in  nurturing  fifty  little  ones.  Only 
poor  work  is  cheap.  And  church  work  must  needs  first  be 
sound,  and  only  then  be  as  cheap  as  practicable. 

True,  also,  the  State  may  be  appealed  to  for  this  pre-primary 
schooling,  and  may  engraft  the  kindergarten  upon  the  common- 
school  system,  as  has  been  done  in  some  places,  and  thus  re- 
lieve the  Church  of  this  charge.  But  if  what  has  been  here 
said  commends  itself  to  the  minds  of  the  clergy,  and  of  those 
interested  in  church  work,  it  will  suggest  to  them  strong 
reasons  why  the  Church  should  not  seek  to  be  thus  relieved, 
should  be  even  positively  unwilling  to  be  thus  relieved,  should 
hasten  to  occupy  the  ground  with  church  kindergartens.  So 
fine  and  delicate  a  work,  on  the  most  plastic  of  all  material,  by 
the  most  personal  of  powers,  seems  greatly  jeopardized  by 
being  made  part  of  a  cumbrous  official  system.  It  may  hold 
its  subtle  spirit  within  this  sphere,  but  there  is  great  risk  of  an 
unconscious  lowering  of  tone,  an  insensible  evaporation  of  the 
spirit  of  the  kindergarten  in  the  routine  working  of  its  mech- 
anism. Above  all  other  branches  of  education,  it  needs  to 
be  fed  from  the  deepest  springs  of  motive  power,  to  be  tided 
with  a  holy  enthusiasm,  to  be  made  a  real  religious  ministry. 
And  because,  with  all  its  defects  in  other  respects,  the  Church 
best  supplies  this  spirit  which  is  the  vital  essence  of  the  kinder- 


254  PREPARA  TION  FOR   THIS  WORK. 

garten,  I  hope  to  see  it  taken  up  by  the  churches.  The  nur- 
ture of  early  childhood  is  so  pre-eminently  the  very  task  of  the 
Church  that  I  am  persuaded  she  needs  only  to  understand  this 
blessed  institution  to  claim  it  as  the  development  of  the  Spirit 
of  Truth,  who  is  ever  revealing  to  men,  as  they  are  able  to 
bear  them,  the  things  needing  to  be  done  for  the  health  of 
humanity,  for  the  perfecting  of  the  body  of  Christ. 

XIV. 

As  the  careful  consideration  of  the  clergy,  in  all  branches  of 
the  Church  of  Christ,  is  thus  drawn  to  the  claims  of  an  institu- 
tion that  is  only  beginning  to  be  seriously  regarded  in  this 
country,  an  institution  which  has  upon  its  surface  so  little  of 
that  wherein  many  have  been  accustomed  to  find  all  church 
work,  there  is  encouragement  in  the  fact  that  there  are  signs 
on  every  hand  of  the  dawning  of  a  day  of  reconciliation,  where- 
in those  who  have  stood  apart  in  their  opinions  about  church 
work  are  to  find  themselves  face  to  face.  Protestantism  has 
separated  along  two  lines  of  work,  drawn  by  two  schools  of 
thought.  Some  branches  of  Protestantism  have  based  their 
work  in  the  culture  of  Christian  character  upon  the  child-ex- 
perience of  formation,  having  a  strong  sense  of  the  organic  life 
of  a  holy  humanity.  Others  have  based  their  work  in  the  cul- 
ture of  Christian  character  upon  the  adult  experience  of  re- 
formation, having  a  strong  sense  of  the  organic  life  of  a  sinful 
humanity. 

Lutheranism,  the  Church  of  England  and  its  American 
daughter,  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church,  have  held  to  the 
idea  of  nurture,  and  have  sought  to  grow  normally  from  in- 
fancy the  sons  and  daughters  of  the  Almighty.  They  are 
learning,  however,  that  with  the  best  nurture  there  will  be 


CHURCHES  OF  NURTURE  AND  CONVERSION.        2$$ 

lapses,  deep  and  wide  ;  that  the  children  of  the  Heavenly 
Father  may  turn  out  prodigals,  needing  in  the  far-off  land  to  say 
to  themselves,  "  I  will  arise  and  go  to  my  Father,  and  will  say 
unto  him,  Father,  I  have  sinned."  They  are  developing  thus, 
alike  in  the  evangelical  and  ritualistic  wings,  the  revivalistic 
spirit  and  methods,  so  that  a  genuine  Methodist  or  Baptist 
would  feel  quite  at  home  in  the  "  Gospel  Meeting  "  or  "  The 
Mission."  While  thus  drawing  nigh  to  their  sister  churches  in 
the  after-work  of  conversion,  the  churches  of  nurture  ought 
surely  to  be  ready  to  receive  this  system  of  child-culture. 

Most  of  the  branches  of  Protestant  Christianity  have  centred 
their  work  upon  conversion,  seeking  to  re-create  the  children 
of  Adam  into  the  sons  and  daughters  of  the  Lord.  Presby- 
terians, Congregationalists,  Methodists  and  Baptists,  are  now 
remembering  that,  under  and  back  of  the  old  Adam,  there  was 
in  every  man,  as  man,  the  older  Christ  ;  a  spiritual  nature 
which,  even  though  dormant,  could  open,  and  should  open, 
in  every  child  into  the  sonship  of  God.  They  are  thus  feeling 
their  way  to  sub- soil  their  needful  work  of  conversion  with 
the  basic  work  of  nurture,  and  are  seeking  to  grow  the  divine 
nature  in  childhood  before  the  devilish  nature  develops  a 
mastery  of  the  being.  The  Sunday-school  receives  most  atten- 
tion in  these  denominations,  and  shows  thus  the  conscious  need 
of  education  as  the  first  of  church  works.  The  dissatisfaction 
felt  with  it  indicates  the  need  of  something  more  truly  nur- 
turing. These  churches  are  more  or  less  consciously  groping, 
under  the  leadership  of  the  Spirit  of  Truth,  in  search  of  a  sys- 
tem which  will  prove  what  Dr.  Bushnell  craved  as  the  need  of 
all  denominations — a  true  "  Christian  Nurture." 

And  thus  all  branches  of  Protestantism  ought  to  be  able  now 
to  receive  this  gospel  of  God's  servant,  Frederick  Frosbel,  in 
their  own  tongue,  and  welcome  it,  and  together  walk  in  the 


256  A   PRACTICAL  EXPERIMENT. 

steps  of  the  true  education  towards  that  new  earth  into  which, 
as  written  of  old,  "  a  little  child  shall  lead  them." 

This  theory  of  the  kindergarten  in  church  work  has  been  submitted  to 
the  test  of  experiment  by  the  church  which  I  have  the  privilege  of  serving, 
and  the  result  is  a  satisfactory  verification  of  the  theory.  Eight  years  ago, 
All  Souls'  Church  in  New  York  opened  its  free  kindergarten.  A  meeting 
of  ladies  was  called,  and  an  address  made  by  Miss  Peabody,  the  venerable 
apostle  of  the  kindergarten  in  the  United  States,  whose  long  life  of  noble 
service  in  the  cause  of  education  crowns  its  honored  years  with  the  fine  en- 
thusiasm in  which,  at  the  age  when  most  are  content  to  rest,  she  has  consecrated 
herself  to  this  gospel  of  the  Christ  Child.  A  simple  organization  was  effected 
from  among  the  ladies  interested  in  the  idea,  under  an  energetic  manage- 
ment. A  subscription  list  was  soon  filled  out  warranting  a  year's  experi- 
ment. Thanks  to  the  counsel  of  the  best  authority,  that  of  Mad.  Kraus- 
Boelte,  we  were  led  to  a  most  fortunate  choice  for  our  kindergartner. 
Miss  Mary  L.  Van  Wagenen  had  cherished  the  idea  of  a  free  kindergarten  for 
the  poor,  and  brought  to  this  venture  that  combination  of  qualities  described 
above  as  essential  to  the  true  kindergartner,  which  in  her  person  has  made 
this  experiment  so  satisfactory  a  success.  A  number  of  young  ladies  vol- 
unteered to  act  as  unpaid  assistants.  The  Sunday-school  room  of  the 
church  was  placed  at  the  use  of  the  kindergarten  association,  and  so  in  due 
time  the  kindergarten  was  opened.  Since  then  it  has  been  in  session  for 
eight  months  of  each  year,  on  five  days  of  the  week,  from  9  A.M.  to  i  P.M. 
From  seventy  to  ninety  children  have  been  kept  on  the  roll,  as  many  as  can 
be  well  cared  for  by  our  force  of  assistants. 

The  plan  of  volunteer  assistants  was  only  designed  as  a  provisional  sup- 
ply. After  the  first  year,  a  training  class  for  kindergartners  was  opened, 
through  which  several  of  the  amateur  helpers  have  passed,  some  into  the 
charge  of  new  kindergartens,  and  others  into  the  positions  of  qualified 
assistants  in  our  own  kindergarten.  We  salary  such  assistants  as  we  are 
able,  and  thus  secure  regular  and  skilled  service. 

To  further  the  physical  culture  ef  the  kindergarten,  a  substantial  dinner 
has  been  provided  daily  for  the  children,  and  out-of-door  excursions  are 
made  in  suitable  seasons,  together  with  a  two  weeks'  visit  to  All  Souls' 
Summer  Home  by  the  Sound. 

The  mental  influence  on  the  children  has  been  very  marked.    The  bright- 


A    PRACTICAL  EXPERIMENT. 

ness  of  their  faces  is  an  expression  of  the  intellectual  quickening  that  has 
taken  place.  Many  of  the  little  ones  have  developed  wonderfully.  Their 
moral  growth  has  been  no  less  marked.  Some  of  the  children  seem  literally 
re-made.  And  generally,  in  the  charming  atmosphere  of  this  spiritual 
child-garden,  there  seem  to  be  budding  those  "  fruits  of  the  spirit  "  which 
are  "  love,  joy,  peace,  gentleness,  goodness."  The  children  are  not  saints, 
by  any  means,  but  they  are  growing  happily,  joyously  and  on  the  whole 
beautifully,  and  as  fast  as  we  dare  expect.  The  best  testimony  to  the  influ- 
ence of  the  work  is  the  appreciation  which  the  poor  mothers  show  of  its 
effects.  The  children  have  even  become  missionaries  of  cleanliness,  order 
and  love,  and  a  little  child  is  leading  many  a  household  toward  some  better 
life.  No  startling  results  are  sought.  We  are  satisfied  to  trust  the  future 
with  the  harvest  of  this  well-used  spring-time. 

In  the  first  year,  it  cost  us  about  $r,ooo ;  the  expense  increasing  as  we 
enlarged  our  numbers  and  added  trained  assistants,  an  advanced  class,  etc., 
until  it  now  costs  us  about  $2,500  per  annum.  We  feel  that  it  is  a  good  in- 
vestment for  Christ.  Any  church  with  $1,000  can  plant  the  infant  school 
of  the  future,  and  the  American  Froebel  Union  will  help  it  to  a  good  kin- 
dergartner. 


IX. 

THE  RELIGIOUS  ASPECT  OF  SOCIALISM. 


OUTLINE. 

Apparent  incongruity  of  title. 

1.  Seeming   irreligiousness   of    Socialism — True    interpretation    of    this 
seeming  irreligiousness. 

2.  Actual  religiousness  of  the  earlier  modern    Socialism — Of   the  later 
Socialism. 

3.  Sources  of   found  in  the  nature  of  Socialism — Socialism  defined — A 
protest  against  the  wrongs  of  our  existing  system — Creates  a  sense  of  com- 
mon life  which  inspires  self-abnegation — An  aspiration  for  the  social  ideal. 

4.  Thus  the  clue  found  to  the  socialistic  tendency  of  others  than  wage- 
workers — Widespread  movement  in  this  direction — Even  along  economic 
lines. 

5.  Socialistic  character  of  the  fresh  religious  forces  of  our  age — Christian 
Socialism  in  the  Catholic  Church — In  Protestanism. 

6.  This  tendency  of  religion  nothing  new — Socialistic  character  of  early 
Buddhism — Of  the  prophetic  religion  of  Israel — Of  early  Christianity — Of 
each  later  revival  in  Christianity — Of  the  Reformation  era — Significance  of 
this  constant  aspiration  of  religion. 

7.  Meeting  of  the  waters — The  social  movement  of  our  century  the  de- 
velopment of  the  political  movement  of  the  last  century — The   religious 
movement  of  our  century  flooding  the  channels  of  this  social  movement — 
Religion's  mission  found  in  inspiring  the  effort  after  the  social  ideal — Deli- 
cacy of  the  task — Danger  of  it — Religion  and  social  science  must  work 
together. 


260 


RELIGIOUS  ASPECT  OF  SOCIALISM.* 


A  more  appropriate  phrasing  of  my  topic  would,  to  most 
minds,  be  "  The  Irreligious  Aspect  of  Socialism."  The  ordi- 
nary notion  of  Socialism  is  that  of  a  revolt  of  cranks  against 
the  order  of  society,  a  conspiracy  of  crack-brained  impractica- 
bles  against  the  sacred  rights  of  property.  If  religion  be  man's 
recognition  of  the  bonds  of  a  Divine  Order  and  his  obedience 
thereto,  then,  to  those  who  identify  our  existing  human  system 
with  that  Divine  Order,  there  would  seem  to  be  little  of  religion 
in  the  chaos  which  apparently  opens  before  us  in  Socialism. 

I. 

Socialism  presents  itself  to  many  minds  as  the  direct  out- 
growth of  a  decay  of  religion.  Dr.  Draper,  in  an  article  on 
"  The  Political  Effect  of  the  Decline  of  Faith,"  places  it  among 
the  sequela  of  unbelief. 

What  is  it  that  has  given  birth  to  the  Nihilist,  the  Communist,  the  So- 
cialist ?  It  is  the  total  extinction  of  religious  belief.  With  no  spiritual 
prop  to  support  them,  no  expectation  of  an  hereafter  in  which  the  inequality 
of  this  life  may  be  adjusted,  angry  at  the  cunningly  devised  net  from  which 
they  have  escaped,  they  have  abandoned  all  hope  of  spiritual  intervention 
in  their  behalf,  and  have  undertaken  to  right  their  wrongs  themselves,  f 

*  Address  before  the  Free  Religious  Association,  at  Parker  Memorial 
Hall,  Boston,  May  29,  1885. 

•j-  Princeton  Review,  January,  1879,  p.  83. 

261 


262  SOCIALISM  SEEMS  IRRELIGIOUS. 

In  that  remarkable  book,  "  Underground  Russia,"  Stepniak 
inclines  to  the  same  conclusion  :  "  Absolute  atheism  is  the  sole 
inheritance  that  has  been  preserved  intact  by  the  new  genera- 
tion, and  I  need  scarcely  point  out  how  much  advantage  the 
modern  revolutionary  movement  has  derived  from  it.'M 

There  can  be  no  question  that,  as  socialistic  ideas  spread, 
workingmen  experience  an  alienation  from  the  recognized 
forms  of  religion.  Senator  Blair,  Chairman  of  the  Senate 
Committee  on  Labor  and  Education,  told  me  that  it  was  the 
almost  uniform  testimony  of  such  representatives  of  the  labor 
movement  as  came  before  his  committee  that  the  workingmen 
of  this  country  were  becoming  increasingly  estranged  from  the 
churches.  This,  I  believe,  is  the  conclusion  of  most  of  those 
who  have  studied  the  problem  of  the  attitude  of  labor  toward 
religion,  in  our  own  country  or  in  other  lands.  There  is  even 
apparent,  on  the  part  of  socialistically  inclined  workingmen,  a 
positive  antipathy  toward  every  traditional  form  of  religion. 
The  more  outspoken  representatives  of  the  movement  violent- 
ly, and  even  blasphemously,  repudiate  all  religious  faith.  One 
of  the  most  radical  of  the  socialistic  papers  of  our  country,  in 
an  article  upon  the  "  Fruits  of  the  Belief  in  God,"  exclaims  : 
"  Religion,  authority  and  State  are  all  carved  out  of  the  same 
piece  of  wood.  To  the  Devil  with  them  all !  "  f  The  extreme 
wing  of  Socialism — that  represented  by  Bakounine — gives  ut- 
terance to  similar  delightful  sentiments  :  "  The  old  world  must 
be  destroyed.  .  .  .  The  beginning  of  all  those  lies  which 
have  ground  down  this  poor  world  in  slavery  is  God." 

It  is  not  necessary  for  me  to  argue  before  this  Association 
that  such  language  does  not  prove  any  real  anti-religiousness, 
or  even  any  real  irreligiousness  ;  that  it  may  simply  signify  a 

*  "  Underground  Russia,"  p.  7. 
f  Quoted  in  "  Recent  American  Socialism,"  R.  T.  Ely,  p.  32. 


RE  A  SONS—RELIGIO  US  FORCES  IN  IT.  263 

needlessly  violent  reaction  from  the  false  forms  of  religion,  a 
shockingly  coarse  protest  against  the  corruption  and  perversion 
of  the  faiths  which  it  would  sweep  off  the  earth.  There  is 
oftentimes  manifested  in  such  language  a  feeling  as  of  a  sup- 
pressed bitterness  toward  a  supposed  friend  that  has  proven 
faithless — as  when  a  certain  socialist  declared  :  "  We  are  not 
atheists  ;  we  have  simply  done  with  God."  The  miseries  and 
1  wrongs  of  the  existing  order  appear,  to  those  who  suffer  from 
them,  to  deny  the  reality  of  a  Divine  Providence  ;  and  the 
fading  out  of  the  belief  in  immortality  from  so  many  minds 
seems  to  rob  them  of  the  one  hope  of  reward  for  the  toils  and 
privations  of  the  life  on  earth.  When  Paradise  looks  to  such 
sufferers  like  the  hope  of  a  future  held  forth  to  keep  them 
patient  under  their  present  hopelessness,  it  is  not  wonderful 
that  a  paper  like  the  San  Francisco  Truth  should  cry  out : 
"  Heaven  is  a  dream  invented  by  robbers  to  distract  the  atten- 
tion of  the  victims  of  their  brigandage."  *  The  very  violence 
of  the  denunciations  of  religion  may,  then,  simply  prove  the 
depth  of  the  feeling  which  has  been  outraged,  the  intensity  of 
the  loss  which  has  been  experienced. 

He  who  rightly  gauges  the  depth  of  the  religious  nature  in 
man  will  not  believe  it  possible  that  any  class  of  men  can  be 
experiencing  an  exhaustion  of  this  sacred  life.  What  seems  to 
be  such  an  exhaustion  must  to  him  appear  simply  as  the  winter 
that  follows  summer  and  autumn,  only  to  make  ready  for  an- 
other spring. 

II. 

This  very  movement  which  appears  to  have  divorced  itself 
so  completely  from  religion,  and  to  have  arrayed  itself  so  in- 
imically  toward  that  ancient  spirit,  is  already  manifesting  the 
*  "  Recent  American  Socialism,"  p.  32. 


264  EARLY  SOCIALISM  RELIGIOUS. 

action  of  forces  which  are  not  distinguishable  from  the  forces 
of  the  religious  sentiment.  Among  the  ignorant,  this  feeling 
takes  some  curious  expressions.  German  workingmen,  who 
had  ceased  to  go  to  church,  developed  a  generation  ago  a  cul- 
tus  of  Lassalle  ;  and  a  belief  was  for  a  while  quite  widespread 
that  their  great  champion,  who  had  lost  his  life  in  a  duel,  had 
died  for  them,  and  that  he  was  to  return  again  to  save  them. 
Among  the  more  intelligent  classes  of  labor,  the  old  religious 
sentiment  seems  to  be  renewing  its  action,  in  the  passion  of  en- 
thusiasm which  inspires  them  as  with  the  ardor  of  a  new  hope 
and  a  new  faith. 

The  earlier  forms  of  modern  Socialism  were  very  strikingly 
characterized  by  a  religious  spirit.  There  was  a  glow  and  fire 
of  enthusiasm,  a  sweep  and  reach  of  imagination,  a  pure  and 
lofty  passion  of  idealism,  in  which  none  could  fail  to  recognize 
the  essential  spirit  of  religion.  Saint-Simon  saw  in  his  teach- 
ing the  long-waited-for  realization  of  essential  Christianity. 
His  doctrines  were  to  constitute  "  the  New  Christianity."  One 
who  visited  the  communistic  organizations  of  Paris  in  1850 
would  have  found  in  many  of  their  halls  a  picture  of  a  sacred 
form,  labelled — "  Jesus  Christ,  the  First  Representative  of  the 
People."  The  little  communistic  societies  which  dot  our  own 
shores  were  mostly  founded  in  a  spirit  of  simple  and  devout 
piety.  Whatever  success  has  attended  any  of  them,  with  one 
or  two  exceptions,  has  been  due  to  the  force  of  the  religious 
inspiration  working  in  them.  The  members  of  Brook  Farm 
felt,  as  one  of  the  community  wrote,  "  a  more  exquisite  pleas- 
ure in  effort  from  the  consciousness  that  we  are  laboring,  not 
for  personal  ends,  but  for  a~holy  principle."  ' 

Even  that  Jacobin  of  Socialism,  Proudhon,  closed  his  mt- 
moire  on  property  with  this  noble  invocation  : 

*"  Recent  American  Socialism,"  p.  15. 


PROUDHON'S  PRA'YER—LASSALLE.  26$ 

O  God  of  liberty  !  God  of  equality  !  Thou  God,  who  hast  placed  in  my 
heart  the  sentiment  of  justice,  before  my  reason  comprehended  it,  hear  my 
ardent  prayer  !  Thou  hast  formed  my  thought,  thou  hast  directed  my 
studies,  thou  hast  separated  my  spirit  from  curiosity  and  my  heart  from  at- 
tachment, in  order  that  I  should  publish  the  truth  before  the  master  and  the 
slave.  I  have  spoken  as  thou  hast  given  me  the  power  and  the  talent  :  it  re- 
mains for  thee  to  complete  thy  work.  Thou  knowest  whether  I  may  have 
sought  my  interest  or  glory.  O  God  of  liberty  !  may  my  memory  perish,  if 
humanity  may  but  be  free  ;  if  I  may  but  see  in  my  obscurity  the  people 
finally  instructed,  if  noble  instructors  but  enlighten,  if  disinterested  hearts 
but  guide  it !  ...  Then  the  great  and  the  small,  the  rich  and  the 
poor,  will  unite  in  one  ineffable  fraternity  ;  and  all  together,  chanting  a  new 
hymn,  will  re-erect  thy  altar,  O  God  of  liberty  and  equality  !  * 

The  later  forms  of  Socialism,  whose  origin  is  found  in  Ger- 
many, however  lacking  they  may  be  in  the  conventional 
expressions  of  religion,  are  not  without  marks  which  betray 
the  workings  of  the  old  force.  The  German  is  naturally  re- 
ligious ;  and,  when  that  religiousness  turns  aside  from  ecclesi- 
asticism,  it  does  but  breathe  out  secularism  with  a  spirit  not  to 
be  distinguished  from  religion.  That  spirit  pours  itself  into 
art  and  philosophy,  and  gives  us,  in  Beethoven  or  in  Hegel, 
music  and  metaphysic  which  are  intensely  religious.  It  pours 
itself  into  social  science,  and  gives  us  a  Socialism  which,  with- 
out knowing  it,  is  fervently  religious.  Lassalle  had  all  the 
fiery  enthusiasm  of  a  new  crusader.  He  closed  his  famous 
lecture  upon  "  The  Workingman's  Programme  "  with  such  a 
passage  as  this  :  "  You  are  the  rock  on  which  the  Church  of 
the  present  is  to  be  built.  It  is  the  lofty  moral  earnestness  of 
this  thought  which  must,  with  devouring  exclusiveness,  possess 
your  spirits,  fill  your  minds,  and  shape  your  whole  lives,  so  as 
to  make  them  worthy  of  it,  conformable  to  it,  and  always 
related  to  it."  f  Even  amid  the  horrors  of  Nihilism,  which  is 

*  "  Works  of  P.  J.  Proudhon,"  i.,  287. 
f  "The  Workingman's  Programme,"  p.  57. 


266  A  RELIGIOUS  ENTHUSIASM. 

at  once  a  political  revolt  and  a  social  revolution,  there  is  a 
lurid  light  as  of  the  kindling  of  those  mystic  forces  which  have 
so  often  burned,  like  the  fire  upon  Abraham's  altar,  in  clouds 
of  smoke,  shaping  dreadful  visions. 

In  such  self-abnegating  enthusiasm  there  breathes  the  essen- 
tial spirit  of  religion,  however  unconscious  it  may  be  of  its  own 
nature.  That  this  enthusiasm  may  pass  very  rapidly  into  the 
consciousness  of  its  own  religiousness  we  may  see  strikingly 
illustrated  in  the  remarkable  work  of  Mr.  Henry  George.  "  Prog- 
ress and  Poverty  "  fairly  glows  throughout  with  the  passionate 
conviction  which  the  author  thus  expresses  toward  the  close  of 
the  book  :  "  It  will  be  read  by  some  who  in  their  heart  of 
hearts  have  taken  the  cross  of  a  new  crusade."  *  This  passion 
of  justice  has  resolved  itself  in  the  author's  soul  into  the  newly 
kindled  fires  of  religion.  The  book  is  a  cry  of  the  soul  as 
much  as  an  argument  of  the  mind.  That  singular  conclusion 
to  a  work  on  political  economy,  the  chapter  on  Immortality,  is 
a  fitting  end  to  a  book  which  breathes  throughout  the  aspira- 
tion of  a  noble  nature  after  social  righteousness.  Those  who 
know  Mr.  George  personally,  know  the  deep  and  genuine  re- 
ligiousness of  the  man,  and  are  aided  in  interpreting  the  social 
movement,  which  he  has  so  mightily  quickened,  from  his  per- 
sonal experience,  as  he  passes  out  from  the  traditional  forms 
of  the  religious  life,  thinking  that  he  has  lost  religion  itself, 
only  to  find  it  once  more  awaiting  him  at  the  conclusion  of  his 
studies  of  social  science,  in  the  enthusiasm  of  humanity  en- 
kindled in  his  soul  as  the  very  love  of  God. 

"    III. 

What,  then,  are  the  elements  in  Socialism  gendering  this  pas- 
sionate aspiration,  which  takes  on  the  tones  as  of  a  new  in- 

*  P.  499- 


DEFINITION  OF  SOCIALISM.  267 

spiration  ?  We  must  needs  define  Socialism.  Socialism  is  not 
to  be  identified  with  any  special  form  which  it  assumes.  Its 
essential  idea  is  larger  than  any  specific  theory  of  a  particu- 
lar writer,  or  than  any  platform  of  a  local  movement.  It 
is  not  to  be  shut  up  to  its  French  or  German  or  Russian 
translation.  It  is  more  than  the  Phalansterianism  of  Fourier, 
the  People's  Banks  of  Proudhon,  the  Political  Organization  of 
Labor  of  Lassalle,  the  elaborate  system  of  Political  Economy 
shaped  by  Karl  Marx,  the  Anarchism  of  Elisee  Reclus  or  Ba- 
kounine,  the  Communal  Proprietorship  of  the  land  which  is 
exercised  by  the  Mir,  the  Land  Nationalization  of  Henry 
George,  or  the  State  Ownership  of  the  Means  of  Production 
which  is  set  forth  by  various  organizations  as  the  programme 
of  Socialism.  Each  of  these  systems  and  theories  and  institu- 
tions forms  a  variety  of  the  species  Socialism,  which  in  turn  is 
a  division  of  the  genus  Political  Economy — a  very  black  and 
altogether  heterodox  member  of  the  family,  but  still  a  legiti- 
mate scion  of  the  stock. 

What  is  there,  then,  that  is  found  in  these  various  forms  of 
Socialism  which  is  common  to  them  all,  which  is  therefore  to 
be  considered  its  essential  idea  ?  Speaking  generally,  it  may  be 
said  that  Socialism  is  the  "  ism  "  of  a  more  social  society,  the 
"ism"  which  seeks  an  industrial  order  that  shall  be  a  real 
commonwealth,  and  which  seeks  that  order  rather  through 
social  action  than  through  individual  action  ;  which  finds  the 
radical  evil  of  our  present  system  in  its  excessive  development 
of  individualism,  and  which  proposes  to  correct  that  evil  by 
the  alterative  of  a  larger  mutualism  ;  which  would  balance  the 
unregulated  action  of  free  competition  by  some  co-ordinating 
power,  proceeding  either  from  great  industrial  and  trade  asso- 
ciations or  through  such  agencies  from  the  State  ;  which  would 
ensphere  private  property  within  a  vast  body  of  common  prop- 


268  NOT  ANARCHISM  OR  COMMUNISM. 

perty,  whether  vested  in  huge  co-operative  societies  or  in  the 
State  itself  ;  which  would  guard  against  the  evils  of  our  pres- 
ent system  by  holding  the  raw  material  of  wealth,  land  and 
the  means  of  production  of  wealth,  machinery,  as  the  common 
property  of  the  labor  which  is  to  create  that  wealth. 

Socialism  is  not  anarchism,  nor  yet  is  it  communism.  It 
does  not  propose  simply  to  overturn  the  existing  order  and  let 
civilization  lapse  back  again  into  chaos.  It  does  not  dream  of 
unwinding  the  mainspring  of  society,  individualism,  and  of 
abolishing  private  property.  It  believes,  whether  rightly  or 
wrongly,  that  it  is  endeavoring  to  carry  on  the  social  organiza- 
tion higher,  to  hasten  sorely  needed  developments  of  the  his- 
toric progress  of  industry,  to  lead  up  our  most  imperfect 
system  into  more  perfect  forms,  to  master  the  anarchic  dis- 
orders of  the  industrial  world  and  to  bring  thereout  a  real 
order,  to  push  forward  the  political  revolution  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century  into  the  economic  revolution  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  to  crown  the  government  of  the  people,  by  the  people 
and  for  the  people  in  an  ownership  of  the  people,  by  the  peo- 
ple and  for  the  people. 

The  leaders  of  Socialism  do  not  expect  to  find  a  speedy 
realization  of  these  aims,  though  the  rank  and  file  of  their  fol- 
lowers may  doubtless  lose  the  time-perspective,  and  may 
look  in  the  foreground  for  the  scenes  that  really  lie  in  the 
shadowy  background  of  their  alluring  vision.  Rodbertus  al- 
lowed five  hundred  years  for  the  realization  of  his  ideas.  Las- 
salle  distinctly  warned  his  followers  against  the  illusion  that  the 
social  revolution  could  be  precipitated  immaturely  upon  civil- 
ization. A  sane  Socialism  expects  to  realize  its  dream  only 
through  the  slow  evolution  of  society.  The  co-operative  State 
is  to  be  the  flower  of  the  process  of  integration  that  is  now 
going  on  in  society  ;  the  government's  necessitated  co-ordina- 


A  PROTEST  AGAINST  INJUSTICE.  269 

tion  of  the  associative  action  which  is  to  be  developed  volun- 
tarily among  the  people  on  an  increasingly  large  sale  ;  the 
ultimate  generalization  from  co-operative  trade  and  industrial 
organizations  ;  the  body  of  public  property  growing  around 
the  public  spirit  that  shall  be  fostered  in  the  reign  of  "  the 
Commons  ";  the  republic  which  is  to  be  a  commonwealth  gov- 
erning itself. 

In  such  a  dream,  whether  it  be  an  illusion  or  a  true  pro- 
phetic vision,  we  can  readily  enough  discern  the  forces  which 
are  feeding  this  new  and  somewhat  strange  manifestation  of  the 
old  religious  spirit. 

Socialism  is  thus  seen  to  be  a  protest  against  the  injustices 
of  our  existing  system,  an  indignant  repudiation  of  the  soph- 
isms which  have  been  palmed  off  on  men  as  exculpating  the 
disorders  that  abound  to-day,  a  cry,  of  those  who  feel  them- 
selves oppressed  and  wronged,  for  justice.  It  is  not  merely 
the  private  protest  of  individuals  ;  it  is  the  protest  of  a  large  class, 
whose  members  feel  themselves  drawn  into  a  living  fellowship, 
as  they  rise  to  assert  their  common  rights.  The  sense  of  fel- 
lowship is  most  real,  even  though  the  rights  sought  may  be  more 
or  less  unreal.  In  this  new-found  community,  the  political 
boundaries  of  the  earth  disappear,  and  men  of  mutually 
hostile  nations  and  races  find  themselves  bound  in  a  solidarity 
of  interests.  This  glowing  sense  of  a  common  life  sublimes 
all  mere  selfish  instincts  into  a  generous  ardor,  an  unselfish 
devotion  to  a  commanding  cause. 

Nor  is  this  new-found  solidarity  merely  that  of  a  class,  how- 
ever large.  The  cause  of  labor  seems  to  these  workingmen, 
rightly  or  wrongly,  the  cause  of  humanity,  the  cause  of  civili- 
zation. To  their  eyes,  the  worst  evils  which  are  found  among 
all  classes  of  society  are  bred  by  the  existing  industrial  order. 
To  it  they  attribute  not  only  the  characteristic  vices  and  crimes 


2/0  SELF  ABNEGATION'  OF  NIHILISM. 

of  poverty,  but  the  characteristic  vices  and  crimes  of  wealth. 
All  these  evils  they  expect  to  disappear,  one  after  another,  as 
the  industrial  system  is  changed.  It  is  thus  no  less  glorious 
a  vision  than  that  of  a  perfected  humanity  which  allures  them 
on  in  aspiration  and  endeavor.  It  is  no  wonder  that  such  a 
vision  calls  forth  the  most  ardent  enthusiasm,  the  most  entire 
self-abnegation. 

Lecky  tells  us  that  "  it  is  always  extremely  important  to 
trace  the  direction  in  which  the  spirit  of  self-sacrifice  is 
moving  ;  for  upon  the  intensity  of  that  spirit  depends  the 
moral  elevation  of  an  age,  and  upon  its  course  the  religious 
future  of  the  world."  *  He  who  is  familiar  with  the  thrilling 
examples  of  heroic  self-abnegation,  of  complete  self-sacrifice, 
which  the  annals  of  Nihilism  record,  will  not  wonder  that 
Stepniak  declares  of  the  earlier  period  of  this  appalling  revolt : 
"  It  rather  resembled  a  religious  movement,  and  had  all  the 
contagious  and  absorbing  character  of  one.  People  not  only 
sought  to  attain  a  distinct,  practical  object,  but  also  to  satisfy 
an  inward  sentiment  of  duty,  an  aspiration  toward  their  own 
moral  perfection."  f  He,  indeed,  thus  characterized  only  the 
earlier  period  of  Nihilism  ;  but,  in  his  own  record  of  the  con- 
tinuance of  these  lofty  impulses  to  enthusiastic  self-sacrifice, 
we  find  that  which  compels  us  to  question  his  characterization 
of  the  later  Nihilist  as  having  "  no  longer  any  religious  feeling 
in  his  disposition."  Stepniak  writes  concerning  these  men,  of 
whom  we  are  accustomed  to  think  as  simply  assassins  : 
"  Every  thing  that  is  noble  and  sublime  in  human  nature 
seems  concentrated  in  these  young  men.  Inflamed,  subjugated 
by  their  grand  idea,  they  wish  to  sacrifice  not  only  for  it  their 
lives,  their  future,  their  position,  but  their  very  souls."  J  He 

*  "  History  of  Rationalism  in  Europe,"  vol.  ii.,  p.  224. 
\  "  Underground  Russia,"  p.  23.          $  "  Underground  Russia,"  p.  27. 


FAITH  IN  A    TRUE    ORDER.  2JI 

gives  us  a  graphic  picture  of  a  millionaire,  Demetrius  Lisogub, 
passing  to  his  execution  :  "  At  last  he  could  satisfy  his  ardent 
desire  to  sacrifice  himself  for  his  cause.  It  was  perhaps  the 
happiest  moment  of  his  unhappy  life."  *  He  tells  us  how,  be- 
fore the  heroism  of  these  monsters,  as  we  think  them,  the  cry 
was  wrung  from  unsympathetic  witnesses  :  "  They  are  saints  !  " 
In  the  sight  of  such  scenes  we  recall  those  other  words  of 
Lecky  :  "  The  very  men  who  would  once  have  been  conspicu- 
ous saints  are  now  conspicuous  revolutionists  ;  for,  while  their 
heroism  and  disinterestedness  are  their  own,  the  direction 
these  qualities  take  is  determined  by  the  pressure  of  the  age."  f 
In  seriously  setting  itself  to  correct-  the  disorders  of  the 
earth,  Socialism  affirms  its  faith  in  the  reality  of  a  true  order, 
and  in  the  possibility  of  realizing  it.  He  who  struggles  de- 
liberately against  a  wrong,  declares  therein  his  conviction  that 
it  can  be  righted  ;  he  who  tries  to  transform  a  chaos,  confesses 
that  he  believes  in  a  cosmos.  If  it  be  impossible  to  establish 
an  order  upon  e'arth,  why  should  one  essay  the  thankless  task 
of  grappling  with  the  disorders  of  earth  ?  However  little  con- 
sciousness of  the  fact  there  may  be  in  the  breasts  of  Socialists, 
their  fundamental  conviction — a  conviction  which  is  unquestion- 
ingly  held,  which  is  expressed  in  childlike  simplicity  of  confi- 
dence, a  faith  which  literally  removes  mountains — is  none  other 
than  the  ancient  belief  in  God.  Mr.  Mill  characterized  the  So- 
cialists as  having  "  moral  conceptions  in  many  respects  far  ahead 
of  the  existing  arrangements  of  society."  \  They  have  caught 
sight  of  the  ideal  social  order.  Its  beauty  has  inflamed  their 
souls.  Its  splendors  have  dazzled  their  eyes,  until  they  no 
longer  can  see  some  hard,  prosaic  facts  of  earth.  In  shirt-sleeved 

*  "  Underground  Russia,"  p.  100. 

•j-  "  History  of  Rationalism,  vol.  ii.,  p.  225. 

\  "  Principles  of  Political  Economy,"  Book  iv.,  ch.  vii.,  §7. 


272  IDEALISTIC  ILLUSIONS. 

Jack  and  barefoot  Tom  there  glows  the  vision  which  was  in 
the  soul  of  a  Plato. 

The  best  exposition  of  German  Socialism  in  the  English 
tongue,  "  The  Co-operative  Commonwealth,"  by  Laurence 
Gronlund,  strikingly  illustrates  this  characteristic  of  the  move- 
ment. It  is  in  reality  almost  as  ideal  a  sketch  as  the  Utopia  of  Sir 
Thomas  Moore  ;  yet  it  is  seriously  written  as  an  outline  of  the 
actual  changes  which  are  to  result  shortly,  through  the  transfer 
of  the  ownership  of  the  means  of  production  from  a  few  hands 
to  many  hands.  With  a  pathetic  simplicity  of  faith,  the  author 
expects  the  regeneration  of  all  things,  the  transformation  of 
human  nature  itself,  to  follow  an  economic  rearrangement  of 
society  which,  though  greater  in  degree,  is  not  different  in 
kind  from  the  rearrangements  which  have  been  gradually 
taking  place  through  several  centuries — not  indeed  without 
substantial  benefits  to  mankind,  but  without  dispossessing  the 
old  Adam  from  the  race.  When  surplus  profits  are  done  away 
and  labor  owns  its  tools,  the  millennium  is  to  open  !  One  who 
desires  such  a  change  in  industry  and  who  believes  that  it  is 
coming,  surely  though  slowly,  cannot  but  sigh,  while  he  smiles, 
at  this  invincible  belief  of  the  human  soul  in  "  the  good  time 
coming  " — always  just  round  the  corner. 

We  can  all  readily  enough  see  through  the  illusion  of  Social- 
ism, but  we  must  none  the  less  allow  for  the  full  force  of  the 
illusion  when  cherished  as  a  faith/  Illusions  have  had  far  more 
power  over  man  than  facts.  They  have  sustained  men  in  efforts 
on  which  they  would  not  have  ventured,  but  for  this  kindly 
craft  of  Mother  Nature.  Illusions  are  the  guides  to  revolution. 
The  force  of  this  particular  illusion  of  Socialism  is  nothing 
less  than  the  power  of  the  mightiest  aspiration,  the  most  irre- 
pressible hunger  which  has  ever  stirred  in  the  human  soul.  It 
is  the  very  force  which  fired  the  souls  of  the  Hebrew  prophets  ; 


SOCIALISM  IN  ALL   CLASSES.  273 

which  kindled  the  vision  of  the  great  unknown  who  wrote  the 
Revelation  of  St.  John  the  divine  ;  which  drew  down  out  of 
the  skies,  above  the  soul  of  Augustine,  the  city  of  God  ;  which 
breathes  in  the  peaceful  war  song  of  the  Societies  for  Ethical 
Culture,  "  The  City  of  Light  " — the  passion  of  human  nature 
for  justice,  the  longing  of  the  spirit  of  man  after  the  ideal 
order. 

IV. 

We  have  thus  reached  a  point  where  we  can  see  another 
phase  of  the  religious  features  of  Socialism.  It  is  not  alone 
wage-workers,  nor  those  who  would  own  themselves  Socialists, 
who  are  feeling  the  forces  of  the  new  enthusiasm  which  is 
rising  in  this  movement,  as  the  ground  swell  of  a  mighty  ocean. 
Men  in  all  callings,  men  who  would  disavow  any  affiliation 
with  Socialism,  sympathize  more  or  less  strongly  with  this 
movement,  and  are  conscious  themselves  of  the  glow  of  a  new 
and  holy  passion  in  the  ardor  wherewith  they  espouse  the 
cause  of  social  reform.  The  fathers  of  Socialism  have  been 
men  who  had  nothing  to  gain  through  it.  Owen  was  a  rich 
manufacturer.  Lassalle  was  a  luxurious  German  gentleman, 
whose  brilliant  opportunities  promised  him,  even  when  he  was 
"  das  Wunderkind,"  a  distinguished  career.  Karl  Marx  was 
of  a  family  whose  social  standing  was  excellent  in  Germany, 
and  life  opened  to  him  fine  political  prospects.  Elise"e  Reclus 
is  a  famous  savant.  The  leading  spirits  of  Nihilism  are  men 
and  women  of  rank  and  wealth. 

In  every  land  in  which  Socialism  is  working  upward  through 
the  lower  social  strata,  from  the  upper  crust  of  society  there  is 
a  motion  toward  it,  though  often  unconscious  of  its  aim. 
Along  every  line  of  life,  men  of  high  power  and  character  are 
being  resistlessly  drawn  into  the  currents  of  this  social  move- 


274  ARISTOCRATIC  SOCIALISTS. 

ment.  Ruskin  has  for  many  years  been  preaching  a  thorough- 
going Socialism,  with  the  fire  of  a  new  faith.  Carlyle  was  the 
prophet  of  this  Titanic  upheaval.  Matthew  Arnold  is  utter- 
ing, in  his  aristocratic  manner,  the  most  unaristocratic 
sentiments  concerning  our  present  civilization.  William 
Morris,  painter  and  poet  and  manufacturer,  has  thrown 
himself  heart  and  soul  into  Socialism,  and  is  lecturing  to 
the  West  End  on  the  redemption  of  art  through  an  indus- 
trial reorganization,  while  he  is  spreading  through  the  East 
End  leaflets  containing  his  impassioned  Chaunts  of  the 
Revolution,  and  is  preaching  in  his  shirt-sleeves  to  gatherings 
of  hard-fisted  artisans  the  gospel  of  Labor.  Alfred  Russell 
Wallace  leads  the  movement  in  England  for  the  nationalization 
of  land.  Renan,  whose  calm  superiority  to  all  illusions  allows 
of  no  such  folly  as  enthusiasm,  evidently  looks  forward  through 
the  winding  up  of  the  era  of  individualism  to  an  era  wherein 
some  life  in  common  may  be  possible  upon  our  earth.  He 
writes  : 

The  Psalm,  ' '  Behold  how  good  and  joyful  a  thing  it  is  for  brethren  to  dwell 
together  in  unity,"  has  ceased  to  be  ours.  But,  when  modern  individualism 
has  borne  its  last  fruits  ;  when  humanity,  dwarfed,  dismal,  impuissant,  shall 
return  to  great  institutions  and  strong  discipline  ;  when  our  paltry  shopkeep- 
ing  society — I  say,  rather,  when  our  world  of  pygmies — shall  have  been 
driven  out  with  scourges  by  the  heroic  and  idealistic  portion  of  humanity, — 
then  life  in  common  will  be  realized  again.* 

These  men  are  not  simply  puzzling  exceptions  among  man- 
kind. Their  tendencies  are  more  than  the  erratic  movements 
of  genius.  Back  of  these  illustrious  figures,  there  is  a  large 
following  of  men  who  are  pressing  on  after  them,  in  line  with 
the  social  movement — men  who  have  come  under  the  spell  of 
this  new  enthusiasm,  whether  it  be  a  good-spell  or  a  most  bad 

*  Quoted  in  the  Christian  Socialist,  October,  1883. 


PROFESSORIAL   SOCIALISTS.  2?$ 

spell.  A  magazine  in  London,  of  a  very  radical  character,  is 
edited  by  young  Oxford  men.  Practical  men,  men  of  affairs, 
millionaires,  are  avowing  their  sympathy  with  this  movement. 
Only  the  other  evening,  in  New  York,  one  of  our  first  citizens 
gave  the  inaugural  address  before  a  newly  formed  institute  of 
social  science,  whose  principles  were  so  radical  as  to  win  the 
hearty  applause  of  leaders  of Jtabor  organizations  who  had  come 
in  a  spirit  of  captious  criticism.  And  this  lecture  was  pervaded 
by  a  lofty  spirit  of  enthusiasm,  by  a  noble  idealism,  whose 
religious  fervor  was  unmistakable.  Next  week,  in  a  Western 
university,  an  oration  is  to  be  given  by  one  of  the  foremost 
men  of  the  Republican  party,  in  which,  with  clear,  strong 
thought,  and  with  frank,  outspoken  words,  the  Industrial  Prob- 
lem will  be  discussed  in  a  way  which  is  likely  to  furnish  food 
for  thought  to  politicians  and  the  press.  The  speaker,  himself 
a  successful  man  of  affairs,  told  me  lately  how  his  study  of  the 
social  problem  had  drawn  him  to  the  conclusion  that  there  was 
but  one  solution  of  it,  that  which  is  known  as  Christian  Social- 
ism— which  is  to  say,  the  spirit  of  Brotherhood  and  of  Justice, 
the  Law  of  the  Golden  Rule. 

"Amateur  economists,"  some  one  will  say,  "all  of  them; 
sentimental  tyros  in  a  science  whose  masters  know  no  such 
pretty  dreams  !  "  Well,  precisely  the  most  surprising  aspect 
of  this  trend,  which  is  making  itself  felt  through  all  cultivated 
circles,  is  the  fact  that  political  economy  is  pouring  a  very  per- 
ceptible and  steadily  rising  current  of  thought  into  this  stream 
of  tendency.  No  conservative  priest  could  feel  more  aghast 
at  some  of  the  utterances  of  your  association  than  many  learned 
professors  must  do  at  the  wild  radicalism  that  is  broached  in 
the  sacred  name  of  political  economy.  John  Stuart  Mill's  post- 
humous chapters  on  "  Socialism  "  showed  clearly,  that  which 
his  great  work  had  hinted,  that  this  set  of  our  age  was  strongly 


2/6  SOCIALISTS  OF   THE   CHAIR. 

working  in  him.  Cairnes  has  avowed  his  sympathy  with  the 
general  aim  of  Socialism,  as  an  ideal.  Thornton  long  ago 
planted  himself  squarely  on  the  side  of  Labor  in  its  contest 
with  Capital.  Thorold  Rogers,  from  his  chair  in  aristocratic 
Oxford,  unmistakably  reveals  his  profound  interest  in  the  essen- 
tial principles  of  the  movement,  challenging  the  very  axioms 
of  the  Manchester  school,  and  denouncing  the  present  state  of 
things  most  roundly.  Even  Fawcett — heroic  struggler  with  a 
cruel  fate — forgat  his  own  book  when  he  became  the  head  of 
the  postal  department,  and  managed  that  department  as  though 
the  function  of  the  State  was,  not  to  do  as  little  as  possible, 
but  to  do  all  that  was  necessary  for  the  welfare  of  the  people, 
as  fanatics  had  taught. 

On  the  Continent,  the  socialists  of  the  chair  have  been,  for 
well-nigh  a  generation,  inculcating  the  general  aims  of  Social- 
ism and  instilling  its  essential  principles.  Even  now  Laveleye 
is  engaged  in  an  interesting  tussle  with  Herbert  Spencer,  over 
the  question  whether  the  socialistic  idea  of  the  state  involves 
the  slavery  or  the  freedom  of  mankind.  In  Germany,  the 
school  which  is  coming  to  the  forefront  in  political  economy 
has  so  far  lapsed  from  orthodoxy  as  to  draw  upon  it  that  last 
crowning  argument  of  scorn  from  all  professors  who  are 
"  sound  in  the  faith,"  with  which  it  is  disposed  of  forever  in 
the  crushing  sentence — "  Sentimentalism  !  "  Such  men  as 
Shaeffle  and  Wagner  are  not  likely,  however,  to  be  silenced  thus 
summarily.  These  masters  are  finding  no  less  influential  a 
pupil  than  Bismarck,  who  is  already  reducing  some  of  their 
theories  to  practice  in  an  astonishing  manner.  From  Johns 
Hopkins  University,  an  able'disciple  of  the  new  school  is  turn- 
ing his  attention  to  the  study  of  Socialism,  in  a  fashion  which 
shows  plainly  enough  the  working  of  this  new  spirit.  Among 
the  younger  professors  of  political  economy  in  our  own  land, 


RELIGION  FEEDING    THIS  ENTHUSIASM.  2// 

there  has  been  lately  formed  The  American  Economic  Asso- 
ciation, as  an  organ  of  the  new  school  of  thought  which  is 
revolting  so  vigorously  against  the  laissez-faire  theory. 

The  change  in  political  economy  is  nothing  less  than  a  revo- 
lution. The  time  has  come  when  Sissy  Jupe  would  not  need 
to  tremble  over  her  stupid  mistake,  as  to  the  thundering  ques- 
tion, What  is  the  first  principle  of  political  economy  ? — she 
should  answer  again,  "  To  do  unto  others  as  ye  would  they 
should  do  to  you." 

V. 

The  careful  observer  need  not  then  be  surprised  at  noting 
the  further  fact  that  the  fresh  religious  forces  of  our  age  are 
rekindling  the  enthusiasm  of  social  regeneration  as  a  sacred 
passion.  This  is  notably  the  case  within  the  lines  of  Ortho- 
doxy. Mr.  Rae  has  clearly  pictured  this  trend  of  life  in 
the  Catholic  Church  upon  the  Continent.  I  have  seen,  lately, 
letters  from  prominent  prelates  of  Ireland,  which  show  them  in 
complete  sympathy  with  the  anti-rent  agitation  of  that  coun- 
try. It  need  surprise  no  one  who  has  watched  the  developments 
now  going  on  within  this  mighty  Church,  and  who  knows  the 
sagacity  with  which  it  has  generally  met  great  crises,  to  see  it 
step  to  the  forefront  of  the  social  movement,  and  avow  itself 
the  champion  of  the  people. 

A  similar  movement  is  quietly  going  on  within  Continental 
Protestantism.  In  England,  the  sympathy  of  a  large  section  of 
the  National  Church  is  very  strongly  with  the  efforts  at  social, 
reform  ;  and  an  earnest  fraction  is  heartily  working  for  the 
social  revolution.  A  generation  ago,  Maurice  and  Kingsley 
threw  themselves  into  the  uprising  of  labor,  and  called  them- 
selves "  Christian  Socialists."  They  led  off  in  the  co-operative 
movement,  in  the  south  of  England,  imparting  to  it  a  religious 


2/8  CHRISTIAN  SOCIALISM. 

spirit  which  it  has  never  thoroughly  outgrown  ;  which  breathes 
still  strongly  in  men  like  Thomas  Hughes  and  Vansittart  Neale. 
"  There  is  no  fraternity,"  said  Maurice,  "  without  a  common 
father."  Within  a  half  decade,  in  the  land  where  Socialism 
was  deemed  an  impossibility,  a  serious  socialistic  movement 
has  developed  in  the  Established  Church.  The  old  name  of 
the  Christian  Socialist  reappears  upon  a  little  paper  which  avows 
the  principles  of  Karl  Marx.  The  Church  Reformer  agitates 
nearly  as  thorough-going  measures  in  the  name  of  the  English 
Church.  Mr.  George  told  me  that,  during  his  late  tours  through 
Great  Britain,  he  attended  many  large  meetings  of  clergymen 
of  the  Established  Church,  which  were  full  of  enthusiasm  con- 
cerning his  book.  In  more  than  one  instance,  ritualistic  clergy- 
men are  known  to  be  in  the  habit  of  gathering  classes  of  work- 
ingmen  on  Sunday  evenings,  in  order  to  expound  to  them  the 
principles  of  "  Progress  and  Poverty." 

The  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  of  this  country  manifests 
less  radical  but  no  less  earnest  tendencies  in  the  direction  of 
social  reform.  At  a  congress  of  that  Church  held  four  years 
ago,  very  outspoken  opinions  were  met  most  cordially  ;  and, 
in  the  last  congress  at  Detroit,  stirring  appeals  to  the  Church 
to  champion  the  wrongs  of  labor  were  received  with  profound 
feeling  ;  so  that,  as  a  result  of  the  congress,  in  that  city  there 
has  been  a  perceptible  drawing  of  the  workingmen  toward  this 
supposed  aristocratic  Church.* 

The  same  movement  shows  itself  in  other  churches.  The 
Christian  Union  has  had  lately  a  series  of  very  remarkable 
editorials,  presenting  an  impassioned  indictment  of  our  present 
industrial  system,  prophesying  a  social  revolution,  and  with  the 

*  The  pastoral  letter  of  the  Assistant  Bishop  of  New  York  upon  the 
Labor  Question,  in  May  of  this  year,  was  one  of  the  most  remarkable  signs 
of  the  times  in  our  day,  and  justly  attracted  wide  attention. 


THIS   TREND   OF  RELIGION  HISTORIC.  279 

fire  of  a  holy  enthusiasm  appealing  to  the  Christian  Church  to 
lead  this  revolution  into  peaceful  success.  The  new  theology 
is  unmistakably  making  in  the  direction  of  Christian  socialism. 
We  thus  seem  to  be  at  the  meeting  of  the  waters,  the  move- 
ment from  below  and  the  movement  from  above  uniting  in  a 
current  which  is  setting  in  the  direction  of  Socialism,  and  which 
is  speeding  forward  with  the  rush  and  sweep  of  a  religious 
enthusiasm.  That  pregnant  word  of  Mazzini  finds  a  remark- 
able realization  :  "  Every  political  question  is  rapidly  becoming 
a  social  question,  and  every  social  question  is  as  rapidly  be- 
coming a  religious  question." 

VI. 

Had  this  stream  of  tendency  come  now  for  the  first  time  to 
the  surface  of  society,  we  might  well  suspect  the  depth  of  the 
springs  from  whence  it  issues,  the  force  of  the  current  which  it 
is  setting  in  motion.  It  is,  however,  a  very  ancient  trend  of 
thought  and  feeling.  When  we  go  below  the  surface  of  history, 
we  find,  in  the  far  back  past,  these  same  springs  welling  up, 
as  from  the  deep  heart  of  religion,  into  a  stream  which  has 
always  set  in  this  direction.  In  every  new  creative  period  of 
religion,  we  discover  a  movement  similar  to  that  which  we  ob- 
serve in  society  to-day. 

Let  us  take  a  bird's-eye  view  of  some  of  the  leading  epochs 
of  religion,  especially  of  such  as  have  had  a  place  in  the  line  of 
progress  up  through  which  our  own  historic  evolution  has  pro- 
ceeded. 

When  Buddhism  arose  in  India,  society  had  stereotyped, 
under  Brahminical  influences,  into  hard  and  rigid  castes. 
The  high-born  Brahmin  held  himself  aloof  with  proud  superi- 
ority from  all  other  castes,  while  he  looked  down  upon  the 


280  BUDDHISM  A   BROTHERHOOD. 

Sudra  with  a  scorn  and  contempt  which  is  hard  even  for  us  to 
realize,  which  it  is  impossible  for  us  to  feel  toward  any  human 
being.  No  human  relationship  could  be  open  between  the  son 
of  heaven  and  the  accursed  children  of  earth.  Their  very 
touch  was  pollution.  The  poor  Sudra,  thus  humiliated  before 
the  spiritual  Brahmin,  was  ground  into  the  dust  by  the  temporal 
Powers.  The  courts  of  the  Rajahs  swallowed  up  most  of  his 
hard-earned  profits  of  farming,  and  the  merciless  rack-renting 
cf  the  Zemindars  completed  the  solution  of  the  problem,  On 
how  little  can  the  peasant  live  ?  The  customary  daily  wage  of 
the  laborer  was  then,  as  it  is  now,  an  incredibly  small  pittance  ; 
a  day's  wage  of  a  skilled  artisan  here  representing  well-nigh  a 
month's  pay  of  the  human  beast  of  burden  in  India.  So  nigh 
to  starvation  did  the  mass  of  men  live  that  every  few  years  a 
famine  would  sweep  them  off  like  flies  before  an  autumnal  frost. 
Amid  such  an  inhuman  society  arose  the  saintly  Buddha  ; 
and,  when  through  terrible  struggles  he  won  the  secret  of 
peace  himself,  he  turned  to  breathe  it  upon  his  brothers  of 
India.  It  proved  not  only  a  gospel  for  the  individual  soul, 
but  a  gospel  for  society.  The  mighty  tide  of  religious  life 
which,  drawn  by  his  great  soul,  rose  over  India,  swamped  for 
a  while  the  abhorrent  social  castes,  and  mingled  all  men  in  a 
common  Brotherhood,  in  which  there  was  neither  Brahmin  nor 
Sudra,  high  nor  low  caste,  but  Humanity  was  all  and  in  all. 
Around  the  holy  Master  gathered  a  vast  order,  a  true  Brother- 
hood, in  which,  renouncing  all  earthly  possessions,  men  gave 
themselves  up  to  the  service  of  mankind,  and  "  had  all  things 
common."  Wherever  these  holy  brothers  went,  they  carried  a 
gospel  of  humanity  which  lifted  the  poorest  to  the  level  of  the 
prince,  and  the  pariah  to  the  side  of  the  twice-born  son  of  the 
skies,  while  it  seated  on  the  throne  of  the  Rajahs,  for  a  while 
at  least,  the  august  form  of  Justice. 


THE  PROPHETS  AND  THE  PEOPLE.      28 1 

We  miss  the  clew  to  the  original  Buddhism,  unless  we  keep 
in  mind  the  fact  that  it  was  not  only  a  spiritual  revival,  but  a 
social  enthusiasm. 

Turn  now  to  the  more  familiar  story  of  the  great  prophetic 
reformation  of  Israel.  It  was  a  revival  of  personal  religion, 
which  breathed  a  new  enthusiasm  of  social  justice  and  bodied 
itself,  later  on,  in  economic  institutions  of  a  most  radical 
kind. 

When  the  great  prophets  arose,  the  civilization  of  Israel  had 
already  passed  through  the  stages  of  development  common  to 
all  early  human  societies.  The  earlier  Hebrews  had  been 
communists.  The  household,  the  local  community,  the  tribe, 
held  pastures  and  fields  and  woods  as  the  property  of  the  fam- 
ily, the  village,  the  clan.  Each  separate  family  received  its 
due  share  of  the  soil  for  cultivation,  in  annual  or  other  periodic 
distributions,  after  which  all  land  lapsed  back  to  the  commune 
for  redistribution.  Such  an  economic  state  of  society  pro- 
duced its  natural  good  and  evil  results.  Life  was  simple, 
peaceful,  brotherly.  There  was  no  poverty  and  no  strife.  But 
there  was  also  no  development.  One  generation  remained 
about  where  its  predecessor  had  been.  There  was  no 
room  for  individualism — the  force  of  progress.  Man  was  con- 
tented and  stupid,  virtuous  and  uninteresting.  Nature,  which 
works  the  growth  of  man  even  through  moral  evil,  began  the 
usual  process  by  which  ambition,  selfishness  and  greed  gradu- 
ally broke  up  this  primitive  communism  ;  in  ways  which  we 
can  well  enough  understand,  if  we  choose  to  study  the  enclo- 
sure of  the  ancient  common  lands  of  England  by  her  nobility, 
and  the  gobbling  up  of  the  people's  land  by  great  corporations 
in  our  own  country. 

By  the  time  of  Isaiah  and  Micah,  the  whole  face  of  early 
Hebrew  society  had  changed.  Land  had  passed  into  private 


282       THE  PROPHETS  AND  THE  PEOPLE. 

property.  The  free  and  sturdy  yeomanry  of  ancient  Israel 
had  been  dispossessed  from  their  homesteads,  which  had  been 
run  together  into  big  estates  or  turned  into  sheep-walks.  They 
had  thus  come  to  be  tenants  under  landlords  instead  of  being 
independent  peasant  proprietors.  They  had  gradually  depos- 
ited, at  the  bottom  of  society,  the  sediments  of  their  class,  a 
stratum  of  lawless,  helpless,  shiftless  people,  a  veritable  prole- 
tariat. Powerful  barons  had  arisen,  lording  it  in  a  high- 
handed manner  on  their  big  estates  ;  while  great  traders  had 
amassed  in  the  cities  huge  fortunes,  of  which  the  mass  of  the 
people  got  the  crumbs  which  fell  from  their  tables. 

In  the  midst  of  this  state  of  things,  with  its  oppression  of 
the  mass  of  mankind,  the  great  prophets  arose,  reviving  reli- 
gion by  touching  the  conscience  and  by  opening  the  senses  of 
the  soul  to  the  eternal  realities.  They  were  "  men  of  the 
spirit,"  who,  out  of  their  profound  inward  experiences,  came 
forth  preaching  a  spiritual  gospel  to  the  worshippers  before 
the  "  bloody  shambles  "  of  the  Hebrew  heathenism.  They 
were  men  of  mind,  who  felt  the  forces  of  the  intellectual 
renaissance  that  was  opening  upon  Israel,  the  forces  of  the 
mental  awakening  which  led  to  the  splendid  development  of 
Hebrew  literature  in  the  age  of  Uzziah  ;  and  they  brought  to 
the  birth  a  new  thought  of  God,  and  opened  the  age  of  reason 
in  religion.  But  they  were  also,  for  the  most  part,  men  of  the 
people,  who  felt  the  undercurrents  of  social  dissatisfaction, 
whose  hearts  heaved  in  sympathy  with  the  unrest  of  the  poor, 
whose  moral  natures  revolted  against  the  thoughtlessness  and 
greed  of  the  talent  and  wealth  and  power  of  the  nation.  Upon 
these  conscious  or  unconscious  oppressors  of  the  people  they 
poured  out  the  vials  of  their  righteous  indignation,  in  words 
too  familiar  to  need  repeating. 

Their  spirit  of  enthusiasm  for  humanity  breathed  itself  into 


HEBREW  SOCIALISM.  283 

the  better  natures  of  the  nation,  and  charged  the  reformed 
religion  which  they  awakened.  When  this  reformed  religion 
came  into  power,  as  the  established  religion  of  Israel,  under 
Josiah,  it  sought  to  bring  in  many  changes  looking  toward  the 
correction  of  the  exaggerated  individualism  of  society  ;  as  we 
see  in  the  confession  of  faith  which  it  then  put  forth — the 
Book  of  Deuteronomy.  When,  much  later  on,  the  reformed 
religion,  elaborately  organized  into  an  ecclesiastical  institution, 
fell  heir  to  the  Hebrew  state,  whose  independence  had  been 
lost  in  the  overthrow  of  Judah  by  the  Babylonian  empire,  it 
developed  the  most  remarkable  social  legislation  of  which  we 
have  any  record  in  history.  That  legislation  was  a  genuine 
Socialism.  It  naturalized  the  land  of  Israel,  and  vested  the 
title  in  Jehovah.  Leases  ran  for  fifty  years,  when  they  were 
all  to  revert  to  the  State,  to  be  by  it  reissued.  Interest,  as 
intrinsically  unethical  and  unbrotherly,  and  as  always  tending 
to  reduce  the  debtor  class  to  slavery,  was  prohibited  by  law. 
All  debtors  were  in  the  same  jubilee  year  to  pass  through  an 
act  of  bankruptcy  ;  and  those  who,  according  to  the  ancient 
custom,  had  fallen  into  bondage  by  debt  were  to  go  forth  free 
men. 

By  such  sweeping  measures,  bodied  in  laws  and  institutions, 
did  the  reform  religion  of  Israel  seek  radically  to  guard  against 
any  monopoly  of  land  and  any  tyranny  of  capital,  and  thus  to 
emancipate  and  ennoble  labor.  Whether  this  remarkable  legis- 
lation was  ever  carried  into  operation  or  whether  it  was  ig- 
nored by  the  nation,  it  shows  very  strikingly  the  socialistic 
character  of  Hebrew  Prophetism. 

After  this  somewhat  full  outline  of  the  Hebrew  Socialism,  it 
is  unnecessary  to  do  more  than  point  out  briefly  the  similar 
character  of  original  Christianity.  As  a  scion  of  Judaism,  it 
must  needs  have  followed  in  the  footsteps  of  its  parent.  We 


284  SOCIAL   STATE  IN  AGE   OF  CHRIST. 

miss  the  secret  of  original  Christianity,  if  we  do  not  find  back 
of  that  mighty  spiritual  revival  as  mighty  a  social  aspiration. 
We  have  perhaps  suspected  the  truth  before  our  day ;  but  we 
are  now  getting  light — as  yet,  dim  enough,  however — upon  the 
inner  character  of  this  social  movement  which  was  aroused  by 
the  preaching  of  "  the  gospel  of  the  kingdom  of  God." 

Christianity  arose  in  an  age  when  the  mass  of  men  led  a 
wretched  life.  In  Rome,  the  encroachment  of  the  patricians 
upon  the  ancient  common  lands  of  the  State  had  broken  up 
the  old  free  farm  life  of  Italy,  while  the  steady  growth  of 
vast  landed  estates  had,  in  their  turn,  destroyed  the  prosperity 
of  the  tenant  farmers  and  revolutionized  the  social  system. 
Crowds  of  dispossessed  peasants  flocked  to  the  imperial  city  to 
swell  the  vast  host  that  bade  against  each  other  in  the  labor 
market,  and  to  become  more  dependent  and  helpless  with 
each  new  generation.  So  great  had  become  the  pauperism  of 
Rome  that,  to  keep  the  vast  host  of  the  discontented  from 
open  outbreak,  a  system  of  State  alms  on  a  gigantic  scale  had 
grown  up.  Slave  labor  was  introduced  upon  the  farms  of 
Italy  in  place  of  the  old  free  labor ;  and  slaves  from  every 
country  under  heaven  filled  the  patrician  palaces  of  Rome — 
veritable  chattels,  whose  heads  might  be  the  forfeits  for  broken 
dishes,  who  might  be  thrown  into  the  fish-ponds  in  the  garden- 
courts  to  feed  the  carps,  if  they  chanced  to  wait  upon  their 
mistresses  awkwardly.  Throughout  the  Empire,  the  state  of 
things  was  quite  as  bad  in  other  ways.  The  Provinces  were 
used  by  Rome,  mainly,  as  so  many  feeders  of  the  patrician 
coffers.  The  subject-peoples  were  taxed  unmercifully,  ex- 
haustingly.  Their  revenues  were  farmed  out  to  court  favor- 
ites and  influential  politicians  ;  and  every  agent  in  the  long 
line,  from  the  Emperor  down,  having  his  own  special  profits 
to  look  after,  had  his  own  private  extortion  to  add  to  the 


SOCIALISTIC   TONE  OF  JESUS,  285 

official  tariff.  The  industry  of  the  Empire  was  prostrated  ; 
its  poor  were  plunged  in  debt. 

In  Judea  it  was  as  elsewhere.  The  demands  of  the  Roman 
State  were  heavy.  The  Emperor  had  his  private  levies. 
Every  procurator  felt  that  his  fortune  had  to  be  made  quickly 
before  his  office  should  be  lost,  Herod  the  Great  had  car- 
ried out  a  gigantic  series  of  so-called  improvements,  at  enor- 
mous cost,  and  his  court  was  lavish  in  the  extreme.  Each 
war — and  there  was  war  all  the  time  somewhere — laid  its  ex- 
tortionate tax  upon  the  people.  The  land-tax  alone  equalled 
one  tenth  of  the  corn.  .  There  were  also  extra  imposts  when 
scarcity  prevailed,  and  tolls  on  bridges  and  roads  and  mar- 
kets. All  these  taxes  were  farmed  out,  yielding  huge  profits 
to  their  collectors.  As  a  consequence,  the  poor  staggered 
under  crushing  burdens. 

These  economic  conditions  of  society  have  to  be  taken  into 
consideration  in  trying  to  understand  the  attitude  of  Jesus 
toward  the  civilization  of  his  day.  Such  oppressions  must 
have  aroused  his  keenest  sympathies.  That  they  did  so  is 
evident  from  the  gospel  records.  Making  all  needed  allow- 
ance for  the  Essenist  tendencies  of  the  Gospel  which  bears 
the  name  of  Luke,  the  fact  remains  that  Jesus  followed  in  the 
line  of  "  the  goodly  fellowship  of  the  prophets,"  in  their  social- 
istic tendencies.  The  general  tone  of  his  teachings  upon  this 
point  is  unmistakable.  His  life  confirmed  his  words,  as  he 
established  a  little  peripatetic  communism  among  his  dis- 
ciples. Prince  of  idealists  as  he  was,  he  taught  the  principles 
of  the  unworldly,  unselfish  life  in  common,  and  exemplified 
their  practice,  never  pausing  to  care  about  their  applicability 
to  the  average  man,  in  the  existing  stage  of  social  develop- 
ment. He  felt  that  it  was  for  him  to  embody  the  human 
ideal,  and  leave  it  to  slowly  work  its  way  down  into  actual 


286  SECRET  BROTHERHOODS  IN  ROME. 

affairs  through  the  ages.  The  folly  of  precipitating  an  ideal 
into  a  law,  of  translating  ethical  principles  into  an  economic 
scheme,  was  not  his  mistake,  but  that  of  his  followers. 

The  inspiration  of  such  a  life  naturally  stirred  the  social 
aspiration,  which,  for  a  brief  moment,  triumphed  over  every 
lower  force,  and  created  that  joyous  life  of  the  first  Christian 
community  ;  a  religious  Socialism,  wherein  "  all  that  believed 
had  all  things  common." 

In  that  waking  dream  we  see  the  natural  expression  of  the 
social  spirit  of  the  new  religion.  If  we  ever  find  access  to 
the  buried  records  of  original  Christianity,  there  is  little  doubt 
that  we  shall  come  upon  traces  of  many  such  Christian  com- 
munities, embodying  a  fervent  religious  Socialism — a  Social- 
ism, not  of  scientific  theory,  but  of  brotherly  impulse.  One 
secret  of  the  rapid  spread  of  Christianity  lay  in  this  char- 
acter of  the  new  religion.  The  oppressed  free  laborer  and 
the  dishonored  slave  laborer  of  the  Empire  were  alike  rest- 
less and  discontented.  Aspirations  that  found  no  vent  heaved 
the  souls  of  myriads  of  men.  Secretly,  with  fear  and  tremb- 
ling, under  cover  of  the  night,  in  out-of-the-way  places,  in  cel- 
lars and  catacombs,  these  oppressed  and  despairing  men  came 
together,  as  by  instinct,  seeking  the  fellowship  of  societies 
and  orders,  in  which  they  should  feel  themselves  brother-men, 
out  of  which  they  should  draw  present  help  and  hope  of 
future  redress.  Secret  brotherhoods  sprang  up  as  by  magic 
through  the  Empire,  forming  burial-clubs,  securing  some 
simple  mutual  assurance,  celebrating  a  common  meal — world- 
old  symbol  of  the  life  in  common. 

Amid  this  yeasty  mass  "of  social  aspiration,  the  ideas  and 
ideals  of  Christianity  entered,  with  quick  and  astonishing  re- 
sults. In  those  strange  subterranean  gatherings  was  whispered 
the  "  good  news  "  told  by  certain  Jews,  of  one  Christus,  a  car- 


EARLY  CHRISTIAN  SOCIALISM.  287 

penter  s  son,  a  Son  of  God,  who  had  taught  men  to  live  as 
brothers,  the  children  of  one  good  and  gracious  All-Father, 
sharing  with  one  another  his  bountiful  gifts,  and  had  bidden 
them  to  prepare  for  the  speedy  coming  down  upon  the  weary 
earth  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  A  Brotherhood  of  the  All- 
Father,  knowing  no  want  in  the  community  wherein  the  rich 
shared  their  wealth  with  the  poor — this  was  the  secret  "  good 
news  "  which,  below  the  surface,  shot  electric  thrills  through- 
out a  suffering  world.  Into  these  Brotherhoods  flocked  the 
wretched  slave  and  the  poor  freeman,  the  outcast  and  the 
oppressed,  everywhere.  The  ancient  vision  of  "  a  good  time 
coming,"  a  millennium  of  peace,  prosperity  and  plenty^ 
opened  from  the  clouds  over  earth.  The  city  of  God  hung 
low  above  the  wretched  Roman  world,  as  though  coming  down 
out  of  the  skies  at  last. 

The  taunt  of  the  cultured  classes  of  pagan  Rome  is  ex- 
plained to  us.  Christianity  was  the  social  aspiration  raised 
by  the  leaven  of  the  gospel  of  a  kingdom  of  God  at  hand,  a 
Socialism  whose  inspiration  was  religion.  We  have  forgotten 
the  origin  of  our  own  Christianity,  which,  winning  success, 
became  the  Church  of  the  wealthy  and  the  noble,  and  buried 
behind  it  the  records  of  its  own  obscure  birth. 

Were  there  time  I  might  trace  the  working  of  this  religio- 
socialistic  tendency  through  the  after-periods  of  Christianity — 
in  the  monasticisms  of  the  Middle  Ages,  in  the  societies  and 
orders  that  rose  through  Europe  with  the  first  stirrings  of  the 
new  spirit  which  was  awakening  to  the  Reformation — one  and 
all  seeking  to  embody  a  life  in  common.  I  might  trace,  along 
each  line  of  the  Reformation  period,  the  inevitable  tendency  of 
the  new  religious  forces  into  a  new  social  movement.  Our 
late  studies  of  Wiclif  and  Luther  must  have  cleared  before 
our  eyes  the  fact  of  a  convergence  of  religious  and  social 


288  LATER  MOVEMENTS— HOW  FAILED. 

forces  in  England  and  in  Germany,  five  hundred  and  three 
hundred  years  ago,  similar  to  that  which  we  are  now  witnessing 
in  our  own  age.  Lollardism  and  Protestantism  found  a  social 
revolution  progressing,  and  from  natural  sympathy  were  drawn 
into  the  currents  of  those  movements,  feeding  their  forces  with 
the  fervor  of  religious  enthusiasm. 

From  the  age  of  the  Hebrew  prophets  down  to  our  own  day, 
every  fresh  creative  period  in  the  evolution  of  religion  has 
witnessed  a  renewed  action  of  the  social  forces  toward  a 
better  and  nobler  order.  Every  revival  and  renaissance  has 
tended  to  a  reformation  or  a  revolution. 

"And  all  have  failed,"  coolly  observes  the  sarcastic  practical 
man.  "  Yes,"  I  reply,  "  as  the  rash  blossoms  fail  when 
tempted  out  in  April  by  some  summer  days  ;  proving  thereby, 
not  that  they  were  no  prophets  of  the  autumn's  fruitage,  but 
only  that  they  were  in  too  much  of  a  hurry."  The  ideal  is  to 
be  approached  only  through  slow,  successive  steps.  We  can- 
not leap  into  the  good  time  coming.  The  kingdom  of  heaven 
is  not  to  be  precipitated  upon  a  worldly  society.  Civilization 
must  ripen  gradually  into  the  sweetness  of  a  brotherhood. 
We  cannot  force  Nature's  seasons.  Society  is  a  growth,  and 
only  through  patient  evolution  can  an  order  be  outworked  in 
which  kings  shall  reign  in  righteousness  and  princes  decree 
equity  ;  in  which  truly  free  peoples  shall  lift  to  the  throne  of 
earth  the  holy  form  of  Justice. 

One  and  all,  these  revolutions  came  to  naught  or  but  reached 
to  partial  reforms,  and  so  they  failed  ;  but,  renewing  themselves 
again  and  again,  they  have  surely  taught  us  to  see  in  them 
true  efforts  of  human  nature,  and  to  recognize  back  of  them, 
in  the  deep  life  of  man  out  of  which  they  have  sprung,  the 
resistless  impulse  which  is  none  other  than  the  will  of  God,  sure 
one  day  of  success.  Under  crude  forms  the  soul  of  man  was 


THE  NEW  SOCIAL   MOVEMENT.  289 

dreaming  a  true  dream  ;  through  mistaken  methods  it  was 
seeking  a  real  ideal.  The  kingdom  of  God  is  not  an  illusion, 
but  the  Divine  Order  slowly  coming  forth  upon  our  human 
society,  The  aspiration  for  it  is  none  other  than  the  deepest 
inspiration  of  religion.  Religion  does  indeed  lay  its  founda- 
6,  deep  and  firm,  in  a  scientific  basis  ;  it  also  towers  into  a 
high  and  noble  social  ideal,  toward  which  its  life  must  forever 
strain,  as  the  plant  strains  towards  its  flower. 

III. 

As  the  prophets  of  old  took  up  the  same  word,  repeating  it 
each  in  his  own  way,  so  now  the  prophetic  word  which  we  have 
heard  Mazzini  utter  rings  in  again  upon  us  through  the  lips  of 
Renan — "  The  political  problem  is,  in  our  own  time,  insepara- 
ble from  the  social  problem  ;  and  the  social  problem  is  a  re- 
ligious one."  *  The  historic  tendency  of  the  social  aspiration 
to  kindle  into  a  religion  is  once  more  flaming  forth  with  an 
intensity  never  known  before,  at  the  very  moment  when  the 
historic  tendency  of  the  fresh,  free  forces  of  religion  toward 
the  social  ideal  is  reasserting  itself  with  unprecedented  em- 
phasis. The  social  movement  which  is  now  mounting  into  a 
tidal  wave  of  reform  or  of  revolution,  according  as  it  finds 
yielding  channels  or  resisting  dikes,  is  the  cresting  of  a  billowy 
agitation  which  has  been  long  gathering  force  in  the  "vasty 
deep  "  of  humanity.  The  political  movement  in  the  last  cen- 
tury burst  the  barriers  which  had  through  ages  restrained  and 
repressed  the  social  agitation.  Labor  now  has,  in  our  land, 
the  political  freedom  and  power  which  are  the  essential  condi- 
tions of  a  successful  struggle  for  economic  improvement  and 
for  social  elevation.  The  scientific  transformation  of  industry 
*  Preface  to  "  Life  of  Jesus." 


THE  NEW  RELIGIOUS  MOVEMENT. 

and  trade  has  precipitated  upon  our  generation  the  inevitable 
crisis  that  otherwise  might  have  been  much  longer  delayed. 
The  greatest  economic  reconstruction  and  the  most  important 
social  uplifting  which  the  world  has  yet  experienced  are  un- 
questionably now  preparing.  The  Fourth  Estate  is  coming 
into  power.  Our  institutions  will  have  to  readjust  themselves 
to  the  change. 

Our  age  is  also  the  period  in  which  the  river  of  the  water  of 
life  is  at  length  rinding  its  natural  outlet  from  the  artificial 
channels  which  antiquity  dug  for  it,  and  is  seeking  to  spread 
itself  over  into  the  broad  fields  of  the  secular  life,  as  the  fertil- 
izing, purifying,  reconstructing  force  under  which  the  desert 
is  to  blossom  as  the  rose.  Religion  must  find  some  sphere  of 
action  for  its  forces.  So  mighty  a  power  cannot  be  inactive. 
In  the  realm  of  thought,  religion  has  overflowed  the  dikes  of 
biblical  revelation,  and  no  longer  narrows  itself  to  speculations 
upon  the  contents  of  a  book.  It  pours  itself  into  the  revela- 
tion of  nature  and  busies  itself  with  the  contents  of  creation. 
Religious  thought  is  found  to-day  wherever  truth  is  learned, 
and,  being  learned,  draws  man  upon  his  knees  in  worship  of 
the  Infinite  Power  and  Wisdom.  In  the  sphere  of  action, 
religion  is  no  longer  shut  up  within  the  narrow  confines  of  an 
ecclesiastical  kingdom  of  God.  With  the  falling  away  of 
those  ancient  walls  which  separated  the  Church  from  the  State, 
religion  pours  itself  into  secular  affairs,  flooding  them  with 
fresh  inspirations,  tiding  through  every  sluggish  current  the 
aspiration  after  the  divine  ideal  of  politics  and  industry.  The 
spirit  which  of  old  moved  upon  the  face  of  the  waters  is  once 
more  brooding  over  chaos  to  bring  forth  a  beautiful  order. 
This  action  of  religion  is  to  be  seen  now  wherever  honest  and 
earnest  effort  is  being  made  to  lift  the  life  of  the  brute-man 
into  the  life  of  the  spirit-man  ;  to  rank  the  forces  of  the  flesh 


THE  MISSION  OF  RELIGION.  29 1 

by  the  forces  of  the  soul  ;  to  bring  economics  under  the 
authority  of  ethics  ;  to  reveal  above  the  natural  laws  ruling  in 
the  market  the  spiritual  laws  of  the  Mount ;  to  lead  competi- 
tion on  into  co-operation  ;  to  conclude  the  long  strife  of 
capital  and  labor  in  the  peace  of  industrial  partnership  ;  and 
to  end  the  irresponsible  tyrannies  of  the  reign  of  Supply  and 
Demand  in  the  sovereignty  of  Conscience. 

The  inspiration  to  this  transformation  of  society  is  the  mis- 
sion of  religion.  What  a  grave  and  weighty  task  !  How 
delicate  and  difficult  a  mission  !  On  the  one  hand,  this  work 
is  clogged  and  thwarted  by  the  mighty  vis  inertia  of  civiliza- 
tion. Traditional  notions,  conventional  theories,  social  preju- 
dices, vested  interests,  sacred  rights  of  property — these  well- 
nigh  omnipotent  forces  of  society  form  an  unholy  alliance,  and 
array  themselves  against  such  a  transformation.  The  institu- 
tions of  religion  are  maintained  chiefly  by  the  very  classes 
whose  interests  are  identified  with  the  existing  order.  How 
great  the  danger  that  the  prophet's  lips  may  be  silenced  by  the 
hand  of  the  priest  before  the  altar  !  The  sincerest  minds, 
under  such  circumstances,  cannot  fail  of  being  more  or  less 
affected  in  their  judgments  quite  unconsciously.  Religion  may 
in  good  faith  encourage  an  unjust  conservatism,  and  thus  abet 
wrongs  and  endanger  its  own  hold  upon  the  heir  to  the  throne, 
now  coming  of  age,  and  already  none  too  well  disposed  toward 
the  spiritual  power.  Here  is  the  opportunity  for  that  free  re- 
ligion which,  in  the  past  of  our  country,  proved  ready  to  speak 
forth  the  unpopular  word  when  the  churches  were  timorously 
silent,  and  which  may  once  more  fulfil  its  prophetic  function, 
and  rouse  the  priesthood  of  our  land  to  the  duty  pressing  upon 
it.  But,  if  the  prophet  would  call  the  priest  up  to  this  task,  he 
must  be  in  a  hurry,  or  he  may  find  his  slow-going  brother 
already  wide-awake  and  at  his  work. 


DANGERS  OF   THIS  MISSION. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  is  at  least  an  equal  danger  for  re- 
ligion in  the  opposite  direction.  From  the  fact  that  religion 
has  such  natural  sympathy  with  the  social  movement,  and  that 
its  own  forces  of  enthusiasm  and  aspiration  are  the  very  forces 
which  are  unconsciously  working  in  Socialism,  it  is  in  danger 
of  losing  itself  in  this  movement ;  of  being  lifted  off  its  feet 
and  carried  away  by  the  popular  current,  instead  of  keeping 
its  poise  and  aiding  to  guide  the  seething  waters  into  the  chan- 
nels where  they  may  prove  a  blessing  and  not  a  blight,  enrich- 
ing civilization  rather  than  impoverishing  it,  becoming  a  system 
of  irrigation  in  place  of  a  freshet.  It  does  not  follow  that,  be- 
cause the  aspirations  of  Socialism  are  high,  its  theories  must  be 
sound  ;  that,  because  its  aim  is  noble,  its  methods  cannot  but 
be  wise  ;  that,  because  its  ideal  is  true,  its  schemes  for  realiz- 
ing that  ideal  are  practicable.  It  was  the  noblest  of  our  ideal- 
ists who  reminded  us  that  the  inspired  man  may  be  "  the  fool 
of  ideas."  Inspired  fools — ah  !  we  may  well  kneel  before 
them  in  reverence,  but  we  may  not  follow  them  unquestioningly 
in  practical  affairs.  Even  inspiration  has  its  dangers.  The 
head  must  be  kept  level  while  the  soul  glows.  Of  the  highest 
prophet  it  is  ever  true  : — 

The  spirit  of  the  Lord  shall  rest  upon  him, 

The  spirit  of  wisdom  and  understanding, 

The  spirit  of  counsel  and  might, 

The  spirit  of  knowledge  and  of  the  fear  of  the  Lord. 

The  ever-recurring  problem  is  how  to  surrender  one's  self  to 
the  ideal,  with  childlike  trust  in  its  reality,  and  yet  not  let  one's 
self  be  made  "the  fool  of  ideas  ";  how  to  be  obedient  to  the 
heavenly  vision,  and  yet  preserve  the  cool  judgment  and  the 
calm  wisdom  of  the  practical  man,vwho  will  not  run  after  the 
pot  of  gold  at  the  foot  of  the  rainbow.  History  leaves  us  in 


SECRET  OF  SAFE  PROGRESS.  293 

no  doubt  that  the  finest  enthusiasms  and  the  noblest  aspira- 
tions may  work  mischief  in  society,  if  they  lack  the  guidance 
of  practical  wisdom.  Even  conscience  must  not  take  the  bit 
in  its  teeth  and  plunge  ahead  blindly.  Simply  to  go  ahead  in 
the  right  direction  too  fast  is  to  derail  progress  and  block  the 
road  with  the  debris  of  ruined  hopes,  even  if  a  frightful  catas- 
trophe be  escaped.  Nature  moves  slowly,  one  step  at  a  time. 
When  there  is  an  eruption  such  as  the  French  Revolution,  it 
always  means  that  there  has  been  some  enforced  arrest  of 
progress,  some  stoppage  of  the  natural  outlet  for  the  volcanic 
forces  of  society.  It  is  only  the  ice  blockade  which  makes  the 
mountain  gorge  a  source  of  danger.  The  secret  of  safety  is 
steady  motion. 

As  of  old,  in  pathetic  reiteration,  so  again  the  social  move- 
ment may  wreck  itself,  if  it  is  in  too  much  of  a  hurry,  if  it  mis- 
takes an  ideal  for  a  reform  bill,  if  it  loses  the  time-perspective 
and  rushes  ahead  to  reach  the  millennium  in  a  spurt.  Its 
sense  of  high  inspiration  must  not  cause  it  to  spurn  the  cold 
counsels  of  science.  Though  its  eye  be  on  the  heavenly 
vision,  let  its  ear  be  open  to  the  voice  of  experience  ;  and, 
while  its  head  fronts  the  skies,  let  its  feet  keep  hard  hold  of 
the  solid  earth. 

With  you,  I  rejoice  to  believe  that  man  is  rapidly  moving 
forward  into  a  truly  free  religion  ;  a  religion  whose  energies 
are  being  quite  fast  enough  emancipated  from  the  tasks  of 
building  card-houses  of  dogma  only  to  be  knocked  over  as 
soon  as  builded,  and  of  constructing  sheep-folds  which,  far 
from  keeping  the  flocks  from  getting  mixed,  only  prompt  them 
to  jump  the  fences  :  a  religion  whose  thought  is  to  be  always 
at  home  to  new  knowledge,  and  whose  forces  are  to  follow 
their  natural  impulse  to  action  in  the  great  world's  affairs,  as 
therein  discharging  the  true  and  only  service  of  God.  In  this 


294  RELIGIOUS  OPPORTUNITY. 

liberation  of  the  mighty  forces  of  religion  for  the  inspiration  of 
a  nobler  civilization  lies  the  hope  of  earth. 

That  hope,  however,  casts  its  shadow  in  a  fear.  Will  re- 
ligion be  wise  enough  to  recognize  its  own  limitations  ?  While 
it  inspires  man  to  mount  after  the  social  ideal,  will  it  hearken 
to  science  as  it  coldly  points  man  to  the  steps  he  must  cut,  one 
after  another,  in  the  glacier  up  which  he  is  to  climb  toward 
the  mountain  crest  ?  Then  may  it  trust  its  inspirations  fully, 
and  cheer  the  weary  toilers  with  its  song  of  "  the  good  time 
coming."  Then  may  it  fearlessly  summon  the  ethical  forces  of 
man  to  rouse  for  the  toilsome  ascent  ;  wakening  conscience, 
quickening  the  sense  of  justice,  stirring  discontent,  stimulating 
aspiration,  and  fearing  no  ill  from  the  action  of  these  un- 
chained genii  of  the  soul.  Then  must  it  even  thus  call  upon 
the  soul  of  man,  if  it  is  to  be  true  as  well  as  free.  For  what 
other  work  has  it  to  do  in  the  world  than  to  bring  in  the  king- 
dom of  God,  to  throne  above  the  forces  of  the  world  the 
eternal  laws  of  right,  to  make  our  earth  an  order,  beautiful, 
divine  ? 

In  the  preamble  to  the  articles  of  association  of  the  great 
industrial  company  at  Guise,  whose  fame  is  world-wide,  M. 
Godin  makes  his  confession  of  faith — the  Golden  Rule  as  the 
law  of  the  Heavenly  Father  for  the  human  brothers.  To  affirm 
this  revelation  with  her  most  solemn  sanctions,  to  persuade  men 
really  to  believe  it,  and  to  induce  men  to  act  upon  it — this  is 
the  mission  of  religion  to-day.  By  whatever  name  it  may  be 
called,  the  religion  which  is  to  lead  the  future  is  that  which 
will  give  effect  to  the  faith  that  great-hearted  Thomas  Hughes 
lately  professed,  and  up  to  which  he  has  so  bravely  lived.  "  We 
have  all  to  learn,  somehow  or  other,  that  the  first  duty  of  man 
in  trade,  as  in  other  departments  of  human  employment,  is  a 
following  after  the  Golden  Rule."  If  it  can  inspire  this  faith, 


RELIGION'S   IDEAL.  295 

religion  may  contentedly  leave  to  political  economy  the  task 
of  adjusting  the  relationships  of  industry  to  this  eternal  law. 
Thus  will  humanity  move  safely  after  that  ideal  whose  alluring 
vision  feeds  the  social  movement  with  its  religious  aspiration  ; 
climbing,  step  by  step,  out  of  the  valley  where  the  chill 
shadows  lie  and  the  noxious  vapors  stifle,  toward  the  mountain 
brow,  over  which  will  be  seen,  through  the  clouds,  the  city  of 
God  coming  down  out  of  heaven  upon  earth. 

No  man  of  our  race  better  types  the  spirit  of  our  age  than 
Mr.  Matthew  Arnold.  The  roots  of  his  religion  run  back  into 
the  faiths  of  his  father,  up  from  which  he  sucks  to-day  unsus- 
pected juices ;  while,  in  the  upper  air,  he  shakes  out  his 
branching  thoughts  to  every  wind  of  heaven,  free  as  those 
winds  themselves.  We  may  well  look  to  him  to  find  the  char- 
acteristic fruitage  of  religion  in  these  strange  days  ;  and,  so 
looking,  we  cannot  mistake  its  nature.  He  writes  : 

The  great  popular  ideal  is  an  immense  renovation  and  transformation 
of  things,  a  far  better  and  happier  society  in  the  future  than  ours  is  now. 
Mixed  with  all  manner  of  alloy  and  false  notions  this  ideal  often  is  ;  yet,  in 
itself,  it  is  precious,  it  is  true.  And,  let  me  observe,  it  is  also  the  ideal  of 
our  religion.  It  is  the  business  of  our  religion  to  make  us  believe  in  this 
very  ideal.  It  is  the  business  of  the  clergy  to  profess  and  to  teach  it.  ... 
This  gospel  (the  fundamental  matter  of  the  primitive  gospel,  the  "good 
news  "  which  Jesus  himself  preached)  was  the  ideal  of  popular  hope  and 
longing,  an  immense  renovation  and  transformation  of  things,  the  kingdom 
of  God.  .  .  .  Whoever  reverts  to  it  reverts  to  the  primitive  gospel, 
which  is  the  good  news  of  an  immense  renovation  and  transformation  of 
this  world  by  the  establishment  of  what  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  calls 
"  God's  Righteousness  and  Kingdom."  * 

And,  thus,  Religion  may  apply  to  Socialism  the  words  which 
he  wrote  to  a  friend  concerning  Republicanism  : 

*  "  Essays  on  Church  and  Religion,"  p.  170. 


296  RELIGION    TO   SOCIALISM. 

God  knows  it,  I  am  with  you  !     If  to  prize 
Those  virtues,  prized  and  practised  by  too  few, 
But  prized,  but  loved,  but  eminent  in  you, 
Man's  fundamental  life  ;  if  to  despise 

The  barren  optimistic  sophistries 
Of  comfortable  moles,  whom  what  they  do 
Teaches  the  limit  of  the  just  and  true 
(And  for  such  doing  they  require  no  eyes)  ; 

If  sadness  at  the  long  heart-wasting  show 
Wherein  earth's  great  ones  are  disquieted  ; 
If  thoughts,  not  idle,  while  before  me  flow 

The  armies  of  the  homeless  and  unfed — 
If  these  are  yours,  if  this  is  what  you  are, 
Then  I  am  yours,  and  what  you  feel  I  share. 


X. 

COMMUNISM. 

A  STUDY  OF  THE  FUNCTIONS  OF  ASSOCIATION  AND  INDIVID- 
UALISM IN  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  SOCIETY  ;  IN  WHICH  A 
COMMONWEALTH  IS  SEEN  TO  BE  AN  HISTORIC  MEMORY 
AND  A  SOCIAL  IDEAL. 


OUTLINE. 

Vagueness    of  popular  notions  concerning   Communism — Definition   of 
Communism — The  logical  antithesis  of  individualism — Historic  antithesis. 

1.  Private  property  seemingly  the  basis  of  civilization — A  lower  stratum 
of  society — Primitive  Communism. 

2.  Material  and  moral  advantages  of  this  primitive  historic  Communism. 

3.  Defecls  of — Nature  moving  to  correct  them. 

4.  The  progress  of  society  shows  a  breaking  up  of  this  Communism — 
The  natural  social  evolution  accelerated  by  selfishness. 

5.  Society's  second  period,  that  of  private  property. 

6.  This  progress  not  an  unmingled  boon — The  seamy  side  of  our  civili- 
zation— Found  in  other  historic  societies,  ancient  and  modern. 

7.  Moral  backwardness  of  our  civilization — Economic  authorities  upon — 
Ethical  aspect  of  interest — Ethical  aspect  of  rent — Social  evils  growing  out 
of  our  system — Indictment  of  our  system. 

8.  Society  not  retrograding — Disorders  of  our  present  system  preparing 
a  higher  order. 

9.  This  the  meaning  of  the  social  movement. 

10.  The  social  movement  evolving  its  philosophy  of  property  rights — 
Common  ground  of  the  various  forms  of  Socialism — Socialism  versus  Com- 
munism— A  real  commonwealth  the  aim  of  Socialism. 

it.     This  movement  no  ebb-tide  of  progress. 

12.  The  three  great  social  institutes  founded  each  on  a  Communism — 
The  Family  a  Communism. 

13.  The  Church  a  Communism — Hebrew  Socialism — The  Socialism  of 
Jesus — The  Socialism  of  primitive  Christianity — Of  the  Reformation — Of 
the  New  Christianity — The  Christian  ideal. 

14.  The  State  a  Communism — Its  organic  life  versus  its  functional  life — 
Natural  tendencies  in  society  towards  repression  of  individualism  and  the 
development  of    higher  association — Prices,  profits  and  interest  sinking — 
Widening  distribution  of  wealth — Widening  area  of  association — Corpora- 
tions— Co-operation — The  State  becoming  increasingly  a  commonwealth — 
Multiplication   of    common   services — Control    of    concentrated    capital — 
Governmental  ownership  of  transportation — The  co-operative  State. 

15.  Orthodox  economy  recognizes  this  ongoing  evolution — Incredulous 
of  the  co-operative  State — This  the  dream  of  the  greatest  thinkers — The 
social  ideal. 

16.  The  form  of  the  new  order  beyond  our  ken — Cyclic  progress  of  the 
race — A  picture  of  progress. 

298 


COMMUNISM. 

A  STUDY  OF  THE  FUNCTIONS  OF  ASSOCIATION  AND  INDIVID- 
UALISM IN  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  SOCIETY  ;  IN  WHICH  A 
COMMONWEALTH  IS  SEEN  TO  BE  AN  HISTORIC  MEMORY 
AND  A  SOCIAL  IDEAL.* 


Communism  is  a  word  wildly  flung  about  in  our  social  dis- 
cussions. It  is  the  stock  bogy  of  our  dry  nurses  of  the  pulpit, 
the  press  and  the  platform,  wherewith  they  scare  children  of  a 
larger  growth  from  peeping  into  the  dark  places  of  our  social 
system.  It  is  the  club  with  which  the  guardians  of  society 
reason,  in  the  "  vigor  and  rigor  "  of  the  New  York  policemen, 
with  the  brazen-faced  Oliver  Twists  who  impudently  dare  to 
ask  for  more — an  argument  that  silences  by  stunning.  In  the 
popular  mind,  it  is  the  alias  of  the  Parisian  petroleuse  and  the 
railroad  rioter,  and  stands  for  a  social  craze  which  is  diseasing 
labor,  filling  the  minds  of  workingmen  with  dreams  of  an  im- 
possible Utopia,  and  inflaming  their  hearts  against  the  existing 
order.  That  intelligent  personality,  the  public,  seriously  sup- 
poses it  to  represent  a  scheme  of  the  discontented  and  debtor 
classes  to  seize  by  force  the  possessions  of  the  wealthy,  and 

*  Paper  read  at  the  Church  Congress,  Albany,  1879.  Enlarged  and  read 
at  the  Ministers'  Institute,  Princeton,  Mass.,  October,  1881.  Unitarian 
Review,  December,  1881. 

299 


300  DEFINITION  OF  COMMUNISM. 

make  a  new  deal  all  round.  It  is  even  mixed  up  with  the  late 
"  complex  marriages  "  of  Oneida,  and  turned  into  a  sort  of 
social  diabolus — a  name  utterly  shocking  to  ears  polite. 

The  extravagance  of  these  misconceptions  is  not  to  be  won- 
dered at  after  the  wild  words  and  works  of  those  who  vaunt 
the  name  of  Communist,  nor  their  vagueness  when  the  reality 
of  what  is  called  Communism  is  itself  a  general  seething  of 
the  social  sea,  a  commingling  of  many  counter-currents  setting 
against  the  surface  drift  of  our  civilization. 

Definition  must  precede  discussion. 

As  ordinarily  used,  Communism  has  a  clear-cut  meaning. 
It  is  the  "  ism  "  which  would  sweep  away  all  private  property, 
real  at  least,  and  would  substitute  at  once  a  system  of  collective 
proprietorship  of  the  soil  and  of  all  productive  instrumentali- 
ties, and  an  equal  distribution  of  the  returns  of  labor.  The 
last  clause  differentiates  Communism  from  Socialism.  Com- 
munism is  thus  the  property  system  of  a  Shaker  community. 
The  social  radicals  who  believe  in  this  "  ism  "  are  so  few  as  to 
make  a  study  of  it  needless. 

But  extremists  are  rarely  the  true  interpreters  of  an  idea. 
Nature  uses  their  energy,  and  then  overflows  the  limitations  by 
which  that  energy  was  concentrated.  The  common  interests 
of  a  commonwealth  may  find  a  more  elastic  expression  in  its 
body  of  common  property.  There  may  be  differences  as  to 
the  nature  and  extent  of  the  property  to  be  held  in  common, 
and  as  to  its  relation  to  the  property  to  be  held  in  severally. 

Communism  may  then  be  defined,  generically,  as  the  "  ism  " 
which,  believing  the  common  interests  of  society  to  be  superior 
to  the  separate  interests  of-individuals,  would  subsoil  civiliza- 
tion with  a  large  body  of  common  property,  and  found  personal 
possessions  on  a  literal  commonwealth. 

Philosophically  considered,  Communism  is  the  logical  an- 


THE  BASIS  OF  CIVILIZATION.  3OI 

tithesis  of  private  property  ;  the  embodiment  of  the  idea  of 
mutualism  rather  than  the  idea  of  separatism  in  wealth  ;  the 
outcome  of  the  altruistic  instead  of  the  egoistic  sentiments  ; 
the  issue  of  the  principle  of  association  contrasted  with  the 
issue  of  the  principle  of  individualism  ;  the  organic  life  of 
society  subordinating  the  special  seeking  of  the  members  to 
the  common  good  ;  mankind  passing  from  the  singular  to 
the  plural  of  the  verb  "to  own/'  and  learning  to  say,  "We 
have,"  instead  of  "  I  have." 

Historically  viewed,  Communism  presents  the  same  correla- 
tion to  the  system  of  private  property  ;  and,  as  a  fact  as  well 
as  an  idea,  we  discover  an  order  of  society  which  is  the  antithe- 
sis of  our  present  civilization  ;  existing  before  it,  and  rising 
ghost-like  on  the  vision  of  our  seers  from  its  decay  ;  at  once 
a  memory  and  an  ideal  ;  the  polar  opposite  of  our  existing 
social  order  ;  between  which  two  states,  the  glacial  and  tropical 
epochs  of  economy,  our  earth  is  oscillating  slowly  in  the  vast 
cycle  of  the  ages. 

I  shall  seek  to  indicate  this  dual  position  of  the  ism  of  com- 
mon property  in  the  historical  evolution  of  society,  and  thus 
hope  to  throw  some  light  upon  our  social  problem. 

I. 

Civilization  apparently  rests  on  the  institution  of  private 
property.  Roman  law,  on  which  all  modern  society  has  reared 
itself,  based  property  on  individual  possession.  The  social 
unit,  the  one  who  could  have  property,  personal  belongings, 
was  the  individual.  In  this  conception,  Roman  law  was  true 
to  facts,  as  then  known.  No  other  order  of  society  was  seen 
or  conceived.  The  earliest  traces  of  society  then  unearthed 
rested  on  the  existence  of  private  property.  Any  exceptions 


302  PRIMITIVE   COMMUNISM. 

reported  by  travellers  appeared  as  the  anomalies  that  are  found 
in  every  sphere.  Upon  this  ground  plan,  Roman  law  drew  the 
form  of  civilization,  and  after  its  pattern  society  has  continued 
to  shape  itself.  Until  our  own  generation,  the  ablest  students 
of  social  science  accepted  this  traditional  foundation  of  civiliza- 
tion as  truly  basic,  the  economic  hardpan.  None  suspected 
that  the  present  order  of  private  property  laid  its  corner-stone 
upon  the  debris  of  an  older  and  totally  dissimilar  order.  It 
was  reserved  for  our  age  of  excavations  to  unearth  this  earlier 
civilization,  and  to  find  below  the  first  layers  of  private  property 
vast  strata  of  communal  property.  Sir  Henry  Maine,  in  his 
studies  of  Ancient  Law,  pointed  out  that  property  once  be- 
longed not  to  individuals,  nor  even  to  isolated  families,  but  to 
large  societies.*  His  researches  among  the  village  communi- 
ties of  India  opened  an  archaic  society  which  was  a  true  Com- 
munism. Danish,  German  and  English  students,  in  their 
explorations  of  the  origines  of  civilization,  came  upon  the  same 
ancient  social  order,  among  widely  separated  peoples  ;  and  the 
Belgian  Laveleye  wrought  these  scattered  investigations  into  a 
masterly  treatise,  which  conclusively  shows,  in  so  far  as  our 
present  knowledge  goes,  that  the  general  system  of  property 
was  once  Communism,  f 

This  system  endured  for  ages  beyond  our  calculation.  It 
was  the  beginning  of  civilization.  Before  it  was  a  period  of 
pure  individualism,  savagery  and  barbarism,  whose  relics 
Spencer,  Tylor  and  Lubbock  have  unearthed.  In  the  dawn 
of  society,  the  gens  or  tribe  sought  its  food  in  the  common 
hunting-grounds,  pastured  its  flocks  in  the  common  grazing- 
grounds,  and,  when  it  ceased  to  be  nomadic,  held  its  arable 
lands  in  common,  built  together  first  the  one  large  hut  and 

*  "  AncieTit  Law,"  Ch.  VIII. 
f  "  Primitive  Property,"  Emile  de  Laveleye. 


ADVAN7^AGES   OF    THAT  ORDER.  303 

then  the  separate  smaller  huts  which  marked  the  development  of 
the  family  individuality,  worked  its  fields  by  conjoint  labor,  and 
shared  together  the  fruits  of  the  common  toil.  This  primitive 
Communism,  varying  its  details  among  different  peoples  and 
slowly  modifying  its  chief  features  in  the  lapse  of  ages,  formed 
the  economic  childhood  of  civilization,  through  which  appar- 
ently all  races  have  passed,  in  which  the  agricultural  com- 
munities of  Russia,  of  the  Sclavic  peoples  generally,  and  of 
large  portions  of  the  East,  still  linger.  It  is  the  foundation 
underlying  our  most  advanced  civilizations,  which,  in  many  an 
archaic  custom,  such  as  the  English  rights  of  common  and  the 
Swiss  All-mend,  crops  out  from  beneath  our  later  social  foun- 
dations, like  the  thrust  of  the  primeval  granite. 

Communism  was  thus  literally  the  foundation  of  civilization. 
Civilization  rests  on  property,  the  material  provision  for  settled 
life,  and  property  was,  first  of  all,  the  belongings  of  the  family, 
the  tribe,  the  community 

II. 

The  material  and  moral  advantages  of  this  historic  Com- 
munism are  not  hard  to  reconstruct.  Nordhoffs  picture  of 
the  charming  contentment,  the  sweet  simplicity,  the  healthy, 
happy,  honorable  life  in  some  of  our  American  communistic 
societies,  images  that  far  back  juventus  mundi.  How  like  a 
dream  looms  the  age  when  no  one  wanted  for  food  or  shelter 
who  willed  to  work  ;  when  every  one  had  free  access  to  the 
bountiful  breast  of  mother  nature  ;  when  toiling  shoulder  to 
shoulder  in  the  common  field,  for  the  common  store,  fellow- 
ship lightened  labor,  and  no  envious  eye  looked  askance  at  the 
richer  yield  of  a  neighbor's  land  ;  when  no  hordes  of  hungry 
men,  savagely  selfish,  elbowed  each  other  aside,  pulled  each 
other  down,  fighting  fiercely  for  the  insufficient  places  at  the 


304  DEFECTS  OF— CORRECTION  OF. 

earth's  table — the  strong  and  the  crafty  grasping  the  prizes 
and  leaving  their  weaker  brothers  to  starve  in  full  sight  of  their 
fat  and  frolicking  fortunes.* 

III. 

Nevertheless,  in  all  its  innocent  happiness,  this  primitive 
Communism  was  only  the  childhood  of  civilization,  having, 
with  the  charm,  the  defects  of  immaturity.  The  infancy  of 
the  race  knew  neither  the  ambitions  nor  the  aspirations  of 
manhood.  It  was  an  unproductive  age  economically,  an  un- 
progressive  age  mentally,  and  an  untried  age  morally.  It  was 
a  stationary  period,  in  which  all  things  continued  as  they  had 
been  from  the  fathers.  Its  calm,  contented  comfort  jvas  the 
ideal  order  of  the  well-fed  and  well-disposed,'  a  beautiful, 
bovine  being.  There  was  no  stimulus  for  the  mind  of  man 
and  little  schooling,  as  through  sin,  of  his  soul.  Society  pre- 
sented an  unpicturesque  level  of  prosaic  prosperity,  having  no 
sunken  valleys  indeed,  but  lifting  no  sunny  summits  to  the 
""large  lordship  of  the  light."  Life  was  as  dull  probably  as 
the  dreary  routine  of  the  Shakers.  Any  marked  development 
of  individuality  would  have  been  fatal  to  this  system  in  the 
historic  past,  as  it  is  instinctively  felt  to  be  fatal  to  it  now  in 
the  little  societies  of  the  Icarians  and  the  Rappists.  Yet  with- 
out this  the  world  would  have  had  no  more  art  or  science  or 
philosophy  than  is  called  forth  in  Zoar  and  Amana.  The  two 
coequal  agents  in  civilization  needed  each  a  period  for  its  special 
development,  in  the  cycling  movement  of  the  ages,  before  the 
equilibrium  could  be  sought  and  found.  Association  out- 

*  Cf.  "Communistic  Societies  of  the  United  States,"  Charles  Nordhoff ; 
concluding  section  on  "  Conditions  and  Possibilities  of  Communistic 
Living." 

"  Russia,"  D.  Mackenzie  Wallace.     Chapters  VIII.  and  IX. 


BREAK   UP   OF  OLD   ORDER.  305 

wrought  its  possibilities,  as  far  as  then  was  possible,  in  the 
epoch  of  Communism. 

Individuality  needed  then  to  be  evolved,  and  its  potencies 
opened  fully.  Nature  corrected  her  own  agency,  and  a  spon- 
taneous movement  began  away  from  the  pole  of  association 
toward  the  pole  of  individualism. 

IV. 

As  we  follow  the  story  of  society,  we  see  this  early  Com- 
munism slowly  modifying  itself.  The  communal  lands  were 
divided  more  frequently,  the  family  shares  were  marked  off  in 
allotments,  these  lots  were  worked  separately  by  the  different 
families,  the  use  of  these  allotments  grew  slowly  into  the  sense 
of  a  real  proprietorship  for  the  time,  much  as  we  feel  now  with 
a  lease,  this  limited  right  settled  into  a  practical  permanency 
of  possession  by  the  gradual  lengthening  cf  the  term  of  use, 
the  common  lands  became  thus  narrowed  by  the  growth  over 
against  them  of  private  lands,  the  use  of  public  lands  came  to 
be  assigned  to  individual  families,  pro  rata  to  their  personal 
possessions  in  flocks  and  fields,  and  the  institution  of  private 
property  crystallized  around  the  new  social  unit,  the  individual. 

This  natural  social  evolution  was  accelerated  by  the  pas- 
sions of  selfishness  that  were  evoked  by  the  force  of  individual- 
ism ;  and  commingling  with  the  peaceful  stream  of  progress 
ran  the  dark  current  of  spoliation,  which  washed  rapidly  away 
the  shores  of  the  old  order  and  carried  off  the  substance  of  the 
common-wealth  to  raise  the  new  strata  of  private  property. 
"  Property  is  robbery  "  sounds,  rightly,  like  frantic  fanaticism 
in  our  ears  ;  but  as  concerns  the  original  formation  of  private 
property,  alike  in  land  and  capital — which  with  labor  make 
the  three  factors  of  all  wealth — there  is  an  unpleasant  amount 


3O6  EVOLUTION  OUT  OF  COMMUNISM. 

of  truth  in  this  dictum.  When  it  became  permissible  for  each 
man  to  hold  and  increase  personal  possessions,  the  native  in- 
equality in  capacity  and  character  quickly  showed  itself,  and 
the  few  rose  above  the  many  with  a  speed  admeasured  by  their 
inferiority  in  conscience  as  well  as  by  their  superiority  in  brain. 
The  strong  and  the  cunning  enriched  themselves  upon  the  old- 
time  common  rights,  in  ways  that  we  can  easily  understand  by 
watching  the  "  enclosure "  of  common  lands  which  is  still 
going  on  in  England,  threatening  to  leave  soon  no  relic  of 
commonage  unwrested  from  the  people* ;  or  the  deeding  away, 
in  one  century  of  national  life,  of  the  available  lands  of  "  the 
commons  "  of  our  country — magnificent  as  was  this  dower — to 
the  railroad  corporations.!  Private  property's  original  title- 
deeds  were  largely  drawn  by  fraud  and  executed  by  force.f 

Thus  through  a  natural  social  evolution,  which  took  up  into 
itself  an  unnatural  process  of  spoliation,  under  the  unfolding 
force  of  individualism,  the  historic  Communism  crumbled  out 
from  the  customs,  the  laws  and  the  institutions  of  society, 
covering  its  record  in  its  own  debris  ;  so  that  when  Roman 
Jurisprudence  dug  down  for  a  foundation,  on  which  to  rest  the 
structure  of  civilization,  it  mistook  for  the  primitive  stratum 
this  crust  of  a  buried  world,  dreaming  not  that  beneath  Ilium 
lay  an  older  Troy. 

*  Cf.  "  Our  Common  Lands,"  Octavia  Hill. 

f  Cf.  "  Industrial  History  of  the  United  States,"  Bolles.  Book  III.,  Ch. 
VI.,  Railroads. 

\  "  At  the  very  commencement  of  society,  as  soon  as  materials  for  its 
construction  were  brought  together,  its  living  constituents  proceeded  forth- 
with to  arrange  themselves  in  layers,  the  stronger,  nimbler,  and  cunninger 
climbing  upon  their  brethren's  shoulders  and  occupying  the  higher  places, 
and  leaving  to  those  below  only  the  office  of  upholding  them  in  their  eleva- 
tion. As  the  pyramid  was  origi»filly  built,  so  has  it  ever  since  subsisted  in 
general  design."  "  On  Labor,"  W.  T.  Thornton.  Intro.,  p.  21. 


PERIOD   OF  PRIVATE  P-ROPERTY.  307 

V. 

Society  passed  thus  into  its  second  period,  the  stationary  age 
opening  into  the  progressive  age.  Political  economy  gives  the 
Genesis  of  our  present  system  ;  though  it  writes  "  the  earth  was 
without  form  and  void,"  in  a  chaos,  where  now  we  see  an  earlier 
order,  out  of  whose  dissolution  the  new  world  arose.  The  in- 
stitution of  private  property  is  the  corner-stone  of  our  civiliza- 
tion. The  spirit  of  individualism  is  the  architectonic  force 
building  the  stupendous  structure  in  which  we  live.  Orthodox 
economists  are  doubtless  right  in  asserting,  in  the  theory 
familiar  to  all,  that  the  imposing  accumulation  of  riches  and 
the  splendid  store  of  knowledge  which,  with  their  resultant 
customs,  laws  and  institutions,  characterize  our  modern  civil- 
ization, have  been  evolved  from  the  free  action  of  this  tremen- 
dous force  of  individualism,  generated  from  the  institution  of 
private  property.  Our  brilliant  society  is  driven  by  the  main- 
spring of  selfishness,  and  runs  its  interlocking  wheels  under 
self-regulating  competition. 

In  both  the  material  and  mental  productiveness  of  mankind, 
this  second  period  of  egoism  has  been  an  undoubted  advance 
upon  the  earlier  period  of  Communism,  of  which  it  is  needless 
to  speak  in  detail  because  the  fact  is  questioned  by  none. 

VI. 

But  this  progress  has  not  been  an  unmingled  boon.  There 
is  a  seamy  side  to  our  brilliant  civilization,  in  which  no  beauty 
appears  and  no  beneficent  order  is  discernible.  The  tremen- 
dous force  set  free  in  the  gradual  break-up  of  the  communal 
system  submerged,  with  the  evil,  the  good  of  the  earlier  epoch  ; 
and,  in  lifting  the  beautiful  mountains  on  whose  heights  the 


308  EVILS  OF  OUR  PERIOD. 

day  is  long,  the  air  keen,  and  life  a  glorious  joy,  sank  the  deep, 
dark  valleys  where  all  foul  and  noxious  vapors  suffocate  the 
children  of  men. 

This  new  social  force  of  selfishness  gradually  dispossessed 
the  men  of  average  brawn  and  brain  from  their  share  of  the 
land  that  was  once  held  by  all  in  common  ;  shut  them  off  from 
the  natural  resources  of  life  ;  drove  the  landless  beneath  the 
supporting,  protecting  power  of  the  landed,  who  had  profited 
from  their  incapacity,  or  even  created  their  poverty  and  its 
helplessness  ;  started  the  feebler  in  mind  and  muscle  down  the 
incline  of  dependence,  villeinage,  serfdom,  slavery  ;  aggravated 
the  relative  debility  and  dulness  which  began  the  separation 
into  classes,  by  the  continual  worsening  of  the  poorer  stock  and 
of  its  conditions  of  life  ;  precipitated  thus  at  the  bottom  of 
society  a  class  having  no  resource  but  the  sale  of  its  labor  to 
the  capitalist  class  crusting 'on  the  top  ;  petrified  these  social 
settlings,  under  the  interaction  of  organism  and  environment, 
into  the  helpless,  hopeless  mass  of  pauperism  that  has  lain 
below  historic  civilization — the  residuum  of  private  poverty 
deposited  in  the  formation  of  private  property.  Poverty,  the 
prolific  mother  of  evils,  spawned  her  woful  brood  upon  the 
earth — ignorance,  disease,  vice  and  crime.  The  wealth  of 
nature,  which  amply  sufficed  for  the  necessities  of  the  whole 
body  over  whom  it  once  spread,  and  which  has  increased  under 
the  productive  energy  of  individualism  as  fast  as  the  growth  of 
population,  has  been  disproportionately  distributed  into  the 
luxury  of  the  few  and  the  poverty  of  the  many.  Instead  of  the 
whole  family  having  a  daily  loaf  of  wheaten  bread,  Dives  has 
fared  sumptuously  every  day  and  Lazarus  has  munched  his 
crusts.  The  city  of  Man  has  planted  itself  upon  piles  of  "  live 
wood,"  thrust  down  into  the  depths  of  drudgedom.  The 
palace  of  culture  has  reared  itself  on  human  caryatides,  look- 


SEAMY   SIDE   OF  SOCIETY.  309 

ing  grimly  in  upon  the    splendors  upborne    on   their   weary 
shoulders. 

The  wonderful  civilization  of  Egypt  rested  on  the  slavery 
familiar  to  the  Christian  world  in  the  Hebrew  history,  pictured 
still  on  the  graphic  ruins  of  the  Nile  valley.  The  brilliant 
society  of  Greece  was  maintained  by  the  helot-hosts,  of  whose 
misery  we  hear  so  little  because  the  Muse  of  History  scarce 
deigned  to  notice  tffem.  The  early  semi-communism  of  Re- 
publican Rome  passed  on  into  the  superb  selfishness  of  Im- 
perial Rome,  with  its  marble  palaces  and  temples,  which  we 
cross  the  ocean  to  see  even  in  their  ruins,  buttressed  against 
the  huge  brick  tenements  that  we  do  not  cross  the  ocean  to  see, 
since  we  have  developed  them  at  home.  England  tells  the 
same  story  through  her  history.  When  Chaucer  sang  the  gay 
life  of  the  gentle  folk  in  court  and  camp,  Langland  was  echoing 
those  blithesome  strains  in  the  despairing  cry  of  the  ungentle 
folk,  hardened  and  imbruted  by  poverty  : 

And  al  they  songen  o  song 
That  sorrow  was  to  heren  ; 
They  crieden  alle  o  cry 
A  careful  note. 

Samuel  Johnson  wrote  of  his  age  :  "  The  whole  mass  of 
human  life  as  seen  in  England  at  the  present  day  presents 
violent  extremes  of  condition,  huge  mountains  of  wealth  and 
luxury  contrasted  with  awful  depths  of  poverty  and  wretched- 
ness."* Of  our  own  day,  Mr.  Fawcett  tells  us  that  "  the  in- 
crease of  national  prosperity  has  as  yet  effected  no  correspond- 
ing improvement  in  the  condition  of  the  laboring  classes."  f  A 
statement,  this,  easily  to  be  credited,  when  we  find  that  two  thirds 

*"  England  as  It  Is."     Quoted  in  Carey's  "  Social  Science." 
f  "  Manual  of  Political  Economy,"  p.  133. 


310  ENGLAND  AND  FRANCE. 

of  the  population  toil,  that  the  other  third  may  be  exempted 
from  toil  *  ;  that  about  seven  thousand  persons  hold  four  fifths 
of  the  soil  of  Great  Britain  f  ;  that  ten  or  twelve  persons  own 
half  the  land  of  Scotland  J  ;  that  seven  million  five  hundred 
thousand  acres  of  land  are  left  waste  in  a  crowded  country  §  ; 
that  nearly  a  million  of  human  beings  are  pauperized,  or  one  in 
every  twenty-one  of  the  population  |  ;  that  eight  thousand 
five  hundred  persons  have  an  incomf?  averaging  $25,000, 
twenty-two  million  an  income  averaging  $455,  and  about  four 
million  five  hundred  thousand  an  income  averaging  $150  per 
annum. ^[ 

Of  France,  in  her  moment  of  perfect  bloom,  Taine  writes  : 
"  It  is  said  that  one  hundred  thousand  roses  are  required  to 
make  an  ounce  of  the  unique  perfume  used  by  the  Persian 
kings  :  such  is  this  drawing-room,  the  frail  vial  of  crystal  and 
gold  containing  the  substance  of  a  human  vegetation."  ** 
Which,  translated  into  plain  prose,  means  that,  as  has  been 
computed,  France  wanted  bread  in  the  age  of  Louis  XIV. 
half  the  time  ;  under  Louis  XV.,  two  days  out  of  three  ;  and 
by  Louis  XVI. 's  time,  three  days  out  of  four  ft ;  the  peasantry 

*  "  On  Labor,"  W.  T.  Thornton.     Intro.,  p.  21. 

f  Arthur  Arnold.  Quoted  by  Mr.  Edward  Atkinson  in  ' '  The  Railroad 
and  the  Farmer,"  Journal  of  American  Agricultural  Association,  vol.  I. 
No.  i. 

\  "  Socialism,"  Rev.  Roswell  Hitchcock,  D.D.,  p.  14. 

§  "Social  Science  and  National  Economy,"  R.  E.  Thompson,  p.  58. 

||  "  On  Labor,"  W.  T.  Thornton,  p.  30.  Estimate  in  1867,  since  when 
a  reduction  has  been  made  in  the  number  of  paupers,  while  the  population 
has  largely  increased. 

^[  "  Wages  and  Earnings  of  the  Working  Classes,"  Leone  Levi.  Esti- 
mate for  1866. 

**  "Ancient  Regime,"  H.  A.JTaine,  Book  II.,  Ch.  I. 

ff  "  Manual  of  Social  Science,"  H.  E.  Carey,  p.  213. 


CONTINENT  AND    UNITED    STATES.  31 1 

eating  grass,  *  and  the  canaille  of  Paris  hoarsely  shouting  for 
the  bread  they  lacked,  while  poor  Marie  Antoinette  wondered 
why  they  did  not  eat  cake  ! 

Of  the  greater  part  of  Europe  to-day,  the  United  States 
consular  reports  show  a  uniform  state  of  things. 

"  The  wages  paid  (in  Germany)  hardly  cover  the  necessities 
of  existence.  .  .  .  The  workman's  life  is  at  best  a  strug- 
gle for  existence.  .  '  .  .  The  large  majority  of  the  working- 
men  (in  France)  barely  earn  sufficient  for  the  necessities  of 
life  "  :  and  so  on  through  the  dismal  pages  that  report  the  con- 
dition of  labor  in  nearly  every  country  of  Europe,  f 

Our  own  land  was  roughly  roused,  a  half  decade  ago,  from 
its  optimistic  dreams  of  room  for  all  and  plenty  for  each — to 
which  Carlyle  savagely  credited  our  exemption  from  the  Old 
World  social  nightmare — to  feel  itself  crowded  with  only  fifty 
million,  where  two  hundred  million  might  be  supported  ;  to 
find  twenty  per  cent,  of  its  people  owning  eighty  per  cent,  of 
its  wealth  \  ;  to  realize  that  there  were  few  industries  in  which 
a  workingman  could  support  his  family,  without  additional 
earnings  from  wife  or  children  §  ;  to  be  told  that  more  than 
two  millions  of  persons  employed  in  our  factories  earned  an 
average  wage  per  annum  of  about  $300  |  ;  to  learn  that  it 
must  no  longer  cherish  the  expectation  of  keeping  the  work- 
ing classes  above  the  level  of  their  brothers  in  Europe  1"  ;  to 

*  "  Social  Science  and  National  Economy,"  R.  E.  Thompson,  p.  137. 

•)•"  State  of  Labor  in  Europe,"  1878.  4&th  Congress,  ist  session.  Ex. 
Doc.  No.  5. 

\  "  United  States  Census  Report,"  1870. 

§  "  United  States  Census  Report,"  1870. 

I  The  census  of  1870  reported  two  million  fifty-three  thousand  nine 
hundred  and  ninety-six  persons  employed  in  factories,  with  an  average 
wage  of  $1.18  per  diem,  or  $369.34  per  annum,  if  they  worked  every  day 
except  Sunday,  which  is  never  possible. 

^[  "  State  of  Labor  in  Europe,"  Intro.,  p.  37. 


312  MORAL  EVILS  OF  INDIVIDUALISM. 

enter  on  its  vocabulary  a  novel  and  abhorrent  word,  the 
"proletariat,"  and  to  catalogue  as  the  latest  product  of  Ameri- 
can industry — the  tramp. 

Every  civilization  proves  a  study  in  chiaroscuro,  whose 
flecks  of  brilliant  light,  with  which  the  eye  is  fascinated,  stand 
out  in  relief  against  a  dense  mass  of  darkness,  into  which  few 
care  to  peer,  and  in  which  those  who  strain  their  eyes  to  see 
are  only  shadowed  by  its  dreadful  gloom,  until  they  sigh,  with 
the  old  weaver,  "  It  's  a'  a  muddle — a'  a  muddle." 

VII. 

The  moral  wealth  of  man  has  not  only  not  advanced  equally 
with  the  increase  of  material  and  mental  wealth — it  has  hith- 
erto lagged  far  in  the  rear  of  their  progress,  and  too  often 
gone  backward  in  an  inverse  ratio  to  their  growth.  The  child- 
hood of  each  people  has  been  its  period  of  purest  morality. 
The  old  brotherliness,  the  kindly  sympathy,  and  warm  fellow- 
ship lingered  still  in  the  dew  of  the  morning  from  that  prehis- 
toric night  of  Communism.  As  they  have  grown  richer  and 
more  cultured,  all  nations  have  grown  poorer  in  the  basic  vir- 
tues. Industry  and  trade  have  become  selfish,  unscrupulous, 
fraudulent ;  classes  have  separated  and  embittered  ;  internal 
dissensions  have  multiplied  in  society  ;  civic  pride  has  de- 
clined, and  political  liberties  have  perished,  in  the  dulling 
sense  of  a  real  commonwealth  ;  government  has  come  to  be  a 
shepherding,  not  of  the  Davidic  kind,  but  of  the  Tweed  style 
—a  feeding  of  the  flock  in  dry  pastures  whence  their  owners 
have  cut  all  the  juicy  grass,  a  leading  of  the  flock  through  the 
noisy  waters  where  the  shearers  stand  waiting  for  their  wool, 
an  Egyptian  protectorate  Jn  the  interests  of  the  bondholders, 
which  sends  the  fellahs,  to  the  music  of  the  lash,  to  pay  the 


ETHICAL    WRONGS  OF  OUR   SYSTEM.  313 

old  taxes  that  ate  up  all  the  land.  Art  has  ministered  no  longer 
reverently  in  the  temple  before  the  altar,  but  dissolutely  within 
the  palace  upon  the  revel.  Religion,  the  bond  of  the  Eternal 
Law,  felt  round  man  through  the  early  codes  of  purity  and 
honor,  has  dissolved,  and  chaos  has  lapsed  upon  civilization. 

That  is  the  story  of  the  decline  and  fall  of  every  great  civil- 
ization which  the  world  has  known  in  this  historic  period  of 
individualism.  After  every  people's  death,  the  inquest  devel- 
ops "individualism  gone  to  seed."  The  more  splendid  a  civ- 
ilization, the  more  ethically  hollow  has  been  the  society.  Flam- 
boyant civilization  has  been  decadent  life — its  brilliance 
hectic.  Material  and  mental  efflorescence  has  proven  the 
showy  result  of  draining  the  moral  roots.  Many  forces,  chief 
among  which  is  the  rejuvenescent  vitality  of  Christianity,  re- 
strain the  corruption  that  civilization  engenders  in  modern 
society.  But  no  one  need  go  far  below  the  surface  to  discover 
that  "  there  's  something  rotten  in  the  State  of  Denmark  " 
Within  our  civilization,  so  fair  upon  the  surface,  covered  over 
by  its  thin  crust  of  beautiful  culture,  there  fester  wrongs  which 
make  progress  seem  an  illusion,  morality  a  sham  and  religion 
a  bitter  mockery.  Of  the  ethical  character  of  the  general  eco- 
nomic results,  Mr.  Cairnes  confesses  that  "  the  solution  actu- 
ally effected  of  these  problems  [the  distribution  of  wealth] 
under  our  existing  system  of  industry  is  not  such  as  entitles  us 
to  claim  for  it  ...  the  character  of  satisfying  the  require- 
ments of  moral  justice."  * 

Mr.  Mill  owns  that  "  the  hardships  and  the  earnings,  instead 
of  being  directly  proportional,  as  in  any  just  arrangement  of 
society  they  would  be,  are  generally  in  the  inverse  ratio  to  one 
another,  "f  • 

*  "  Some  Leading  Principles  of  Political  Economy  Newly  Expounded," 
J.  E.  Cairnes,  ch.  vi.,  §  5. 

f  "  Principles  of  Political  Economy,"  J.  S.  Mill,  i.,  475. 


3H  ETHICAL    CHARACTER   OF  INTEREST. 

We  have  come  to  accept,  as  a  normal  order  of  things,  a  sys- 
tem which  places  human  beings  in  relations  that  eat  out  the 
sense  of  brotherliness  and  justice,  and  educate  selfishness  in  a 
way  which  I  leave  economists  to  describe. 

"  In  any  given  case,  the  more  the  employer  receives,  the  less  will  be  left 
for  the  employed  ;  or,  in  other  words,  the  more  is  taken  in  the  form  of 
profits,  the  less  will  be  given  in  wages."  * 

' '  One  may  be  permitted  to  doubt  whether,  except  among  the  poor  them- 
selves, for  whose  prejudices  on  this  subject  there  is  no  difficulty  in  account- 
ing, there  has  ever  yet  been  in  any  class  of  society,  a  sincere  and  earnest 
desire  that  wages  should  be  high.  There  has  been  plenty  of  desire  to  keep 
down  the  poor-rate  ;  but,  that  done,  people  have  been  very  willing  that  the 
working-classes  should  be  ill-off.  Nearly  all  who  are  not  laborers  them- 
selves are  employers  of  labor,  and  are  not  sorry  to  get  the  commodity 
cheap,  "f 

"  Masters  are  always  and  everywhere  in  a  sort  of  tacit,  but  constant  and 

uniform,    combination,  not   to  raise   the   wages   above  their   actual   rate. 

We  seldom,  indeed,  hear  of   this  combination,  because  it  is  the 

usual   and,  one  may  say,  the  natural  state  of  things  which   nobody  ever 

hears  of."| 

The  economic  foundations  of  our  system  do  not  well  bear 
the  ethical  sunlight.  Neither  of  the  two  factors  of  wealth, 
apart  from  labor,  is  free  from  a  suspicion  of  its  rightfulness, 
however  ample  is  its  justification  on  the  lower  grounds  of 
expediency,  as  is  fully  to  be  admitted  in  the  present  stage  of 
society. 

Capital  increases  by  interest.  Interest  is  certainly  a  needful 
spur  in  an  individualistic  system  of  society,  indispensable 
to  quicken  the  energies  and  ambitions  and  prudences  on 
which,  as  on  the  lower  rounds  of  life's  ladder,  men  begin  to 

*  "  Manual  of  Political  Economy,"  Hlhry  Fawcett,  p.  169. 

f  "  Principles  of  Political  Economy,"  Mill,  i.,  461. 

\  "  Wealth  of  Nations,"  Adam  Smith,  book  i,  ch.  viii. 


ETHICS  OF  LAND.  315 

mount.  While  men  continue  to  compete  instead  of  co-operate, 
it  is  wholly  warrantable  and  necessary,  but  it  never  has  suc- 
ceeded in  vindicating  itself  beyond  question  before  the  bar  of 
ethical  principles.  That  it  seems  to  have  done  so  is  owing  to 
the  binding  force  of  customary  morality.  Religion  has  gener- 
ally condemned  it.  The  Roman  Church  still  identifies  inter- 
est with  usury.  Protestantism's  sanction  is  extorted  by  the 
evident  necessity  of  it  in  the  present  state  of  society.  It  is 
allowed,  as  Moses  permitted  divorce  of  the  Indiana  kind,  for 
the  hardness  of  men's  hearts.* 

Land  is  so  identified  with  individual  ownership  that  any 
question  of  the  justice  of  such  ownership  seems  to  us  utter 
fanaticism.  Yet,  whenever  the  case  is  carried  to  the  supreme 
tribunal  and  laid  before  the  enlightened  conscience,  it  grows 
dubious,  to  say  the  least.  Land  was  the  one  thing  which  men 
once  deemed  unquestionably  wrong  to  hold  apart  from  their 
fellows.  Whatever  individul  proprietorship  might  be  allowed 
in  tools  and  houses  and  flocks,  all  peoples  were  unanimous  in 
regaruing  land  as  common  property  ;  nature's  provision  for 
the  needs  of  all ;  God's  gift  to  the  family  of  man,  to  be  used 
as  brothers  use  the  house  table.  Whole  races  so  think 
still.  Those  who  in  our  most  progressive  societies  yearn  after 
the  pattern  showed  upon  the  Mount,  even  though  it  deny  the 
law  of  the  market,  echo  this  voice  of  the  childhood  of  the 
race.  They  say  :  Land  is  like  water,  air,  sunlight— no  man's 
creation,  all  men's  endowment,  inalienable  forever  from  the 
people  at  large.  The  ripest  reason  of  our  highest  authorities 
re-affirms  this  judgment  of  the  conscience.  Herbert  Spencer 
says  :  "  Not  only  have  the  present  land  tenures  an  inde- 

*  All  such  accommodations  of  ethical  laws  to  immature  societies  are 
gradually  outgrown.  Thus,  interest  is,  under  purely  natural  processes, 
shrinking  toward  a  minimum.  Cf.  §  xiv. 


OUR  DISORDERS  CONSTITUTIONAL. 

fensible  origin,  but  it  is  impossible  to  discover  any  mode  in 
which  land  can  become  private  property."  * 

John  Stuart  Mill  lays  down  the  sweeping  principle  :  "  The 
land  of  Ireland,  the  land  of  every  country,  belongs  to  the  peo- 
ple of  that  country."  f 

He  amplifies  this  statement  thus  :  *'  When  the  '  sacredness 
of  property  '  is  talked  of,  it  should  always  be' remembered  that 
any  such  sacredness  does  not  belong  in  the  same  degree  to  landed 
property.  -No  man  made  the  land.  It  is  the  original  inheri- 
tance of  the  whole  species.  Its  appropriation  is  wholly  a 
question  of  general  expediency.  When  private  property  in 
land  is  not  expedient,  it  is  unjust."  \ 

Rent  remains  to  this  day  the  pons  asinorum  of  all  tyros  in 
political  economy,  the  problem  where  even  some  of  the  masters 
involve  themselves  hopelessly  in  seeking  to  justify,  ethically, 
private  proprietorship  of  land. 

If  ethically  unsound,  it  is  no  wonder,  need  I  say  it  here, 
that  our  civilization  has  naturally  tended  to  decay.  And  this  is 
what  we  are  at  last  beginning  reluctantly  to  learn.  The  more 
thoroughly  preventive  philanthropy  diagnoses  the  disorders  of 
society,  the  more  clearly  does  it  become  apparent  that  back  of 
all  symptomatic  ailments  there  is  a  constitutional  malady,  that 
the  very  life  forces  of  a  competitive  civilization  are  feeding  the 
cancerous  tissue  which  spreads  starvation,  sickness  and  sin. 

The  proletariat  is  the  waste  thrown  down  by  our  industrial 
mechanism.  The  tramp,  who  developed  a  half  decade  ago 
into  such  huge  proportions,  over  whom  the  Social  Science  As- 
sociations were  so  perplexed,  whom  legislatures  sought  to 
exorcise  by  laws  recalling  the  Elizabethan  statutes  of  blood 

*  "Social  Statics,"  p.  134. 

\  "  Principles  of  Political  Economy,"  book  ii.,  ch.  x.,  §  I. 

J  "  Principles  of  Political  Economy,"  book  ii.,  ch.  ii.,  §  6. 


ECONOMIC  ROOTS  OF    VICE  AND   CRIME.  3 1/ 

and  iron,  proved,  after  all,  a  product  of  the  industrial  stagnation, 
and  not  of  the  total  depravity  of  the  workingman's  heart,  and  has 
disappeared  as  a  serious  problem  with  the  reopening  of  employ- 
ment. The  pauper  was  probably  unknown  in  the  early  historic 
communism,  as  he  is  certainly  unknown  now  in  our  little  Ameri- 
can communisms,  and  in  the  communes  of  Russia.  Even  the 
lazy  learn  to  work  there  without  stocks  or  stone-breaking.* 

I  had  occasion  to  study  the  facts  of  the  social  evil  some 
years  ago  in  aiding  to  found  a  midnight  mission,  and  I  learned, 
as  all  who  have  looked  into  the  matter  probably  know, 
that  insufficient  wages,  unsteady  employment,  enforced 
idleness,  too  early  commencement  of  labor  in  childhood,  and 
consequent  defectiveness  of  education,  the  withdrawal  of 
motherly  influence  from  the  home  under  the  necessity  of 
woman's  work  to  eke  out  the  support  of  the  family — direct  re- 
sults all  of  our  industrial  system — have  more  to  do  with  pros- 
titution than  has  lust. 

Who  that  has  looked  below  the  surface  of  the  problem  of 
intemperance  does  not  know  that  it  is  not  so  much  a  crime  to 
be  repressed  by  statutory  prohibition  as  a  disease  to  be  cured 
by  better  homes,  purer  air,  more  wholesome  food,  less  wearing 
work,  less  carking  cares,  and  greater  interest  and  pleasure  in 
the  daily  labor — conditions  withheld  in  our  individualistic  sys- 
tem from  the  great  mass  of  laborers. 

We  may  deplore  the  existing  morals  of  trade,  and  try  all  the 
alleviations  which  Mr.  Spencer  suggests  in  his  admirable 
essay,  but  the  demoralization  will  continue  as  long  as  the 
homely  description  given  by  Tregarva  remains  true  to  facts  : 
"  Go  where  you  will,  in  town  or  country,  you  '11  find  half  a 
dozen  shops  struggling  for  a  custom  that  would  only  keep  up 

*"  The  Communistic  Societies  of  the  United  States,"  Charles  Nordhoff, 
p.  395.  "  Russia,"  D.  Mackenzie  Wallace,  chaps,  viii.  and  ix. 


3l8  SELFISHNESS  OUR   SOCIAL  MAINSPRING. 

one,  and  so  they  're  forced  to  undersell  one  another.  And, 
when  they  've  got  down  prices  all  they  can  by  fair  means, 
they  're  forced  to  get  them  down  lower  by  foul — to  sand  the 
sugar  and  sloe-leave  the  tea  and  put,  Satan  only  that  prompts 
them  knows  what,  into  the  bread  ;  and  then  they  don't  thrive  ; 
they  can't  thrive.  God's  curse  must  be  on  them.  They  begin 
by  trying  to  oust  each  other  and  eat  each  other  up  ;  and, 
while  they  're  eating  up  their  neighbors,  their  neighbors  eat  up 
them  ;  and  so  they  all  come  to  ruin  together."* 

All  these  social  evils  strike  down  their  tap-roots  beneath  the 
very  groundwork  of  our  civilization.  They  are  the  sequela  of 
the  fever  of  individualism  which  is  firing  the  social  system. 
The  tremendous  force  of  selfishness,  once  freed  from  the 
strong  box  in  which  communism  shut  it  up,  threw  off  the 
venerable  bonds  of  fellowship,  broke  through  the  sacred  laws 
of  morality,  and  developed  a  fierceness  of  greed  which  became  a 
root  of  all  evil,  socially.  Selfishness  has  proven  itself  the  nulli- 
fication of  true  order,  in  a  general  "  ooze  and  thaw  of  wrong." 

What  a  terrific  indictment  of  our  economical  system  is  pre- 
sented in  the  simplest  statement  of  the  results  of  ages  of  com- 
petitive civilization  !  A  few  living  in  idle  luxury,  the  great 
mass  toiling  slavishly  from  ten  to  eighteen  hours  a  day  \  ;  the 
producers  of  all  wealth  receiving  just  enough  to  keep  above 
the  hunger  level  J  ;  women  taking  the  place  of  men  in  the 
weary  work  of  the  factory,  §  consuming  the  mothering  powers 
of  body,  mind  and  soul,  wherein  lie  the  hopes  of  humanity  |[  ; 

*  "  Yeast,"  Charles  Kingsley,  xv. 

f  "  On  Labor,"  W.  T.  Thornton,  Intro.,  p.  21. 

\  "  State  of  Labor  in  Europe,"  Intro. 

§  Even  in  our  new  and  thinly  settled  land,  the  Census  Report  of  1870 
shows  one  million,  eight  hundred  and  thirty-six  thousand  two  hundred  and 
eighty-eight  females  employed  in  all  industries. 

|  "  Sex  in  Industry,"  Azel  Ames,  Jr.,  M.D.,  pp.  41-54. 


COMPETITIVE  CIVILIZA  TION' S  CONSEQUENCES.     3 1 9 

children,  who  should  be  accumulating  in  wise  play  the  capital 
for  life,  discounting  it  in  advance  in  prolonged  and  unwhole- 
some tasks  *  ;  mechanism  competing  with  manhood  in  the  "  labor 
market,"  crowding  man  out  from  the  cunning  crafts  in  which 
he  once  won  his  best  education,  sinking  him  to  the  cheap 
mechanical  attendant  upon  the  costly  intelligent  automaton  f  ; 

*  The  United  States  Census  for  1870  showed  ten  per  cent,  of  the  total  num- 
ber of  women  employed  in  industries  to  be  under  fifteen  years  of  age, — i.  e., 
one  hundred  and  ninety-one  thousand.  Mr.  Charles  L.  Brace  estimated 
in  1872  that  from  fifteen  hundred  to  two  thousand  children  under  fifteen 
years  of  age  were  employed  in  New  York  City  in  one  branch, — the  manu- 
facture of  paper  collars.  In  tobacco  factories,  he  found  children  of  four 
years  of  age  employed,  sometimes  half  a  dozen  in  one  room.  He  quotes 
Mr.  Mundella  as  saying  that  the  evils  of  children's  overwork  are  as  great 
here  as  in  England.  Cf.  "  Dangerous  Classes  of  New  York,"  C.  L. 
Brace,  ch.  xxix.  How  great  this  evil  has  been  in  England  -is  best 
expressed  by  the  fact  that  Mrs.  Browning's  "  Cry  of  the  Children  "  is  a 
wail  drawn  out  by  investigations  made,  as  in  "  The  Cry  of  the  Children  in 
the  Brick-Yards  of  England,"  and  in  parliamentary  reports.  Children 
were  found  of  three  and  one  half  years  in  the  brick-fields  ;  girls  of  nine 
carrying  lumps  of  clay  on  their  heads  weighing  forty  pounds,  for  thirteen 
hours  a  day  ;  children  working  sixteen  hours  a  day  in  Lancashire  mills  for 
six  days,  and  then  spending  six  hours  on  Sunday  in  cleaning  the  machinery 
— the  Lancashire  hymn  teaching  the  little  ones  to  sing  on  the  day  of  rest : 

"  I  must  work,  but  must  not  play, 
Because  it  is  God's  holy  day." 

Before  the  Hewitt  Committee,  one  man  testified  to  seeing  a  child  carried 
on  its  father's  back  to  work  in  a  factory. 

•(•"Principles  of  Political  Economy,"  Mill,  ii.,  340.  Cf.  Testimony 
presented  before  the  Hewitt  Congressional  Committee,  pp.  108,  232,  etc. 
Since  1870,  in  the  United  States,  machinery  has  doubled  the  productive 
power  of  our  people.  This  represents  an  increase  of  22,000,000  man- 
power. The  population  of  England  and  the  United  States  together  equal 
some  80,000,000  to  90,000,000,  but  measured  by  the  productive  power  of 
machinery,  these  two  countries  have  a  population  of  1,000,000,000.  This 
represents  the  real  crowd  in  the  labor  market. 


32O    COMPETITIVE  CIVILIZA  TION'S  CONSEQUENCES. 

the  greed  of  gain  stimulating  a  cut-throat  competition,  which 
undersells  men  where  it  used  to  sell  them,*  schools  the  business 
world  in  the  arts  of  fraud,  f  prostitutes  government  to  the  money 
lust  of  the  wealthy,  J  converts  trade  into  what  a  parliamentary 
report  frankly  called  "  war,"  §  lays  waste  nations  in  the  strat- 
egetic  campaigns  of  this  most  desolating  of  struggles,  ||  and 
periodically  collapses  wealth  in  bankruptcy  ^[  ;  the  inspiration 
of  selfishness  giving  to  the  world  a  revelation  of  natural  law 
which  formulates  over  this  disorder  the  Codex  Satanis,  sets  up 
against  the  authority  of  the  Mount  the  authority  of  the  mar- 
ket, rules  out  ethical  law  from  the  basic  sphere  of  life,  sustains 
all  appeals  of  avarice  from  the  court  of  equity,  narcotizes  con- 
science with  statutes  of  irresponsibility,  and  leaves  to  the 
blind  working  of  demand  and  supply  the  equation  of  the  con- 
ditions of  life  for  the  great  mass  of  human  beings  *  *  ;  society 
vainly  striving  to  correct  with  the  left  hand  of  charity  the 
wrongs  which  the  right  hand  of  injustice  is  creating,!  f  our  very 
progress  whirling  us  along  at  a  rate  that  strains  all  bands 

*  Mr.  Evarts,  in  the  Introduction  to  the  "State  of  Labor  in  Europe," 
holds  out  as  the  magnificent  destiny  of  this  country  a  girding  of  all  its 
energies  to  the  sublime  task  of  selling  cheaper  than    Europe.     .     . 
When  the  "heathen  Chinee  "  enters  this  race  with  machinery,  as  he  is 
preparing   to   do,   what   a  vista  of  the   industrial  millennium  will  open  ! 
"  State  of  Labor,"  p.  37. 

f  Cf.  the  writer's  "  Morals  of  Trade." 

J  Cf.  The  tariff  legislation  and  railroad  subsidies  in  our  Congress. 
§  "  Unity  of  Law,"  H.  C.  Carey,  p.  183. 

|  "  Social  Science  and  National  Economy,"  R.   E.  Thompson,  p.   240. 
If  Panics  are  now  reduced  to  terms  of  law,  and  take  their  place  in  the 
due  order  of  civilization  in  recurrent  cycles  of  about  ten  years. 

*  *  Cf.  any  of  the  orthodox  English  economists  on  prices,  wages,  etc. 

f  !  In  England,  where  the  charities  are  ubiquitous  and  the  pauperism  has 
steadily  increased  until  lately,  "one  is  almost  forced  to  see  this  relation. 
Cf.  "  The  Peasantry  of  England,"  F.  T.  Heath,  ch.  i. 


IS  SOCIETY  BREAKING    UP?  321 

of  fellowship,  exhausts  the  endurance  of  the  feeble,  and 
flinging  off  their  relaxing  grasp,  hurls  them  out  into  the  debris 
of  soul-dust  that  strews  the  pathway  of  our  world  through 
time. 

Well  might  John  Stuart  Mill  confess  that  such  facts  "  make 
out  a  frightful  case  either  against  the  existing  order  of  society, 
or  against  the  position  of  man  himself  in  this  world."*  We 
are  tempted  to  call  the  science  of  such  a  society  "  the  phil- 
osophy of  despair  resting  on  an  arithmetic  of  ruin."  f 

VIII. 

Is  society,  then,  hopelessly  retrograding?  By  no  means. 
With  our  eyes  upon  the  long,  slow  pendulum-swing  of  the 
historic  movement  of  society,  we  recognize  the  significance  of 
the  disorders  of  our  civilization  and  discern  the  secret  of  their 
correction.  Between  Individualism  and  Communism,  society 
has  oscillated  in  rhythmic  alternations,  whose  sweeps  have 
been  counted  by  ages  ;  each  movement  carrying  humanity  into 
conditions  fatal  to  its  continuance,  and  then  being  drawn 
slowly  back  by  polar  forces  only  to  swing  out  into  the  anti- 
podal extreme ;  civilization  mounting  higher  through  these 
successive  reactions,  and  centring  toward  the  golden  mean,  the 
happy  equipoise  of  these  two  essential  forces.  Feeling  only 
the  sweep  of  this  force  of  Individualism,  we  might  imagine 
civilization  rushing  into  certain  destruction,  as  many  prophesy  ; 
but  below  the  surface  currents  there  pulse,  even  nc*w,  to  our 
perception,  the  forces  of  an  opposite  movement,  long  gathering 
head  and  at  last  checking  the  centrifugal  rush  of  society  ;  and, 

*  "  Chapters  on  Socialism  "  (Posthumous  Fragment). 
f  "  Manual  of  Social  Science,"  H.  C.  Carey,  p.  486. 


322  MEANING  OF   THE  NEW  SOCIAL   STIR. 

out  in  the  aphelion  of  its  pathway,  the  orbit  of  civilization  rounds 
into  a  new  sweep  down  "  the  ringing  grooves  of  change  "  back- 
ward toward  Communism. 

IX. 

This  is  the  meaning  of  the  recoil  everywhere  making  itself 
felt  from  the  economic  system  in  which  have  been  formulated 
the  principles  of  our  order  ;  of  the  stir  in  the  deep  under- 
waters of  society,  setting  steadily  against  the  whole  trend  of 
competitive  civilization.  This  new  movement  assumes  differ- 
ent forms  and  takes  different  names  in  different  lands.  It 
mingles  itself  in  some  countries  with  political  currents,  as  in 
Russia ;  and  occasionally  loses  any  distinctively  economic 
character  in  a  wild  outburst  of  all  the  turbulent  elements,  a 
civic  craze,  as  in  the  war  of  the  Parisian  Commune  in  1871, 
when  the  stream  suddenly  becomes  a  whirlpool,  and  sucks  all 
counter-currents  into  a  maddening  vortex  that  engulfs  society. 
Substantially,  however,  Russian  Nihilism,  German  Socialism, 
French  Communism  (distinguishable  always  from  the  purely 
political  system  of  the  Commune,  civic  autonomy),  English 
Trades-Unionism,  and  the  legion  varieties  of  labor  organiza- 
tion in  our  country,  are  the  changing  crystallizations  of  the 
huge  mass  characterized  by  the  Nation  as  "  the  party  of  dis- 
content." The  discontent  is  often  groundless,  as  against 
society  ;  being  caused  in  reality  by  the  personal  faults  and 
follies  of  the  discontented,  by  the  "  laws  mighty  and  brazen  " 
which  piess  so  hard  round  all  life.  It  is  often  inflamed  by 
ignorance  and  diverted  by  demagogism  from  its  legitimate  aim 
to  further  selfish  schemes.  Not  unfrequently,  also,  it  is  the 
cloak  under  which  dishonesty  seeks  to  shirk  its  just  respon- 
sibilities. Nevertheless,  at  bottom,  this  discontent  grounds 


A    SOCIAL  REVOLUTION.  323 

itself  upon  the  admitted  evils  of  our  civilization.  There  is 
thus  massing  over  against  our  order  the  sullen  forces  of  labor, 
in  a  recoil  to  be  admeasured  by  the  resistance  of  the  increas- 
ing enlightenment  and  increasing  power  of  the  class  most  op- 
pressed by  our  civilization.  It  is  still  largely  a  vague  revolt 
against  the  existing  order,  the  aimless  striking  out  of  men  who 
do  not  see  very  clearly  but  who  feel  very  keenly  with  Tre- 
garva,  "  Somebody  deserves  to  be  whopped  for  all  this."  It 
is,  however,  rapidly  becoming  a  conviction  that  the  disorders 
and  wrongs  of  civilization  are  not  the  mere  accidents  of  our 
social  system,  but  its  legitimate  and  inevitable  products,  and  a 
determination  to  reconstruct  society.  Brains  are  no  longer 
confined  to  the  cultured  classes.  Poor  men  are  studying  so- 
cial science,  with  the  keen  insight  born  of  suffering  and  spurred 
by  the  stinging  sense  of  wrong.  They  are  applying  the  ethical 
stethoscope  to  the  vital  parts  of  the  social  organism,  sounding 
every  suspected  organ,  diagnosing  the  patient  with  an  honest 
frankness  undisturbed  by  traditions,  undismayed  before  au- 
thority, and  unseduced  by  interest.  In  the  social  revolution 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  which  is  following  the  political 
revolution  of  the  eighteenth  century,  the  venerable  economic 
wrongs  of  civilization  are  docketed  for  trial  immediately  after 
the  hoary  governmental  wrongs  have  been  adjudged.  The  next 
"  suspect "  to  be  called  before  the  bar  of  the  people  is  property. 
Each  problem  of  property,  however  fundamental,  however 
axiomatic  we  deem  it,  is  to  be  reopened  and  worked  out  to  a 
new  conclusion,  which  may  turn  out  other  than  that  set  down 
in  the  books.  That  equation  will  be  sought  in  terms  of  ethics. 
While  tender-hearted  philanthropists  have  been  studying  to 
alleviate  the  secondary  and  symptomatic  disorders  of  society, 
socialistic  thinkers  have  been  seeking  a  constitutional  cure  and 
propose  now  a  radical  alterative. 


324  NEW  PHILOSOPHY  OF  PROPERTY. 

X. 

The  social  revolution  is  evolving  its  philosophy  of  property 
rights,  as  the  political  revolution  evolved  its  philosophy  of 
personal  rights.  This  new  philosophy  is  Socialism,  an  "  ism  " 
coloring  itself  according  to  the  idiosyncrasies  of  nations  and 
individuals,  yet  preserving  one  character  in  all  its  phases.  All 
its  schools  unite  in  finding  the  essential  evil  of  the  social 
organism  in  the  excess  of  individualism,  and  in  prescribing,  in 
large  doses,  the  alterative  of  association.  Saint-Simon,  Proud- 
hon,  Fourier,  Karl-Marx,  Lasalle,  Schulz-Delitzsch,  Bakunin, 
Herzen,  Holyoake  and  Owen  agree  in  their  diagnosis,  and 
differ  in  their  therapeutics  only  as  to  the  form  and  measure  of 
the  one  specific  to  be  used.  The  common  production  and  the 
just  distribution  of  wealth  are  to  cure  the  maladies  created  by 
the  private  production  and  the  selfish  distribution  of  wealth. 
The  joint-stock  association  of  capital  and  labor  of  Fourier,  the 
people's  non-interest-bearing  credit  banks  of  Proudhon,  the  co- 
operative capital  of  Marx,  the  New  Harmony  of  Owen,  the  Mir 
of  Russia,  are  but  varying  forms  of  one  principle — co-work  for 
a  commonwealth,  in  whose  brotherly  production  and  distribu- 
tion the  good  of  each  shall  be  subserved  by  the  good  of  all ; 

Till  each  man  finds  hisi>wn  in  all  men's  good, 
And  all  men  work  in  noble  brotherhood. 

Much  that  is  supposed  to  be  essential  to  Socialism  is 
really  accidental,  the  coloring  of  circumstance.  Socialism 
is  ordinarily  identified  with  State  organization  and  direction  of 
the  co-operative  industry  and  trade  ;  but  this  is  only  the  idio- 
syncrasy of  the  French  and  German  mind,  educated  under  a 
bureaucrasy,  accustomed  to  look  to  it  for  the  initiative  in  all 
matters,  and  naturally,  therefore,  modelling  a  socialistic  State. 
English  Trades-Unionism  only  asks  the  State  to  keep  its  hands 


SOCIALISM.  325 

off,  and  relies  wholly  on  the  self-helpfulness  of  individual 
action  for  the  reorganization  of  industry.  Russian  Socialism 
makes  the  local  autonomic  Commune,  the  Mir,  the  centre  and 
spring  of  society.  Its  ideal  is  "  the  federation  of  free  unions 
of  workingmen."  *  If  American  Socialism  looks  for  State 
intervention,  •  it  is  only  because  it  is,  as  a  theorem,  an  exotic 
among  us.  German  and  French  authors  form  its  Bible,  Ger- 
man and  French  lecturers  and  pamphleteers  carry  on  its 
evangel,  German  and  French  quarters  furnish  its  disciples. 

Socialism  is  frequently  identified  with  Communism,  as  popu- 
larly understood — the  Communism  which,  as  in  our  American 
local  societies,  holds  all  real  property  in  common,  divides  the 
yield  of  labor  equally  among  its  members,  irrespective  of  rela- 
tive skill  and  service,  and  leaves  scarcely  any  place  for  personal 
possessions.  A  few  Socialists,  out  of  Russia,  are  perhaps  such 
thorough-going  Communists.  There  are,  however,  no  stronger 
opponents  of  literal  Communism  than  the  leading  Socialists. 
They  are  wise  enough  to  discern  that  this  obliteration  of  indi- 
vidualism would  be  fatal  to  progress  ;  and  their  systems  would 
leave  large  play  for  this  force,  and  would  secure  its  action  by 
the  retention  of  private  property,  real  and  personal.  The  ex- 
treme measure  seriously  proposed  by  Socialism,  the  national- 
izing of  land,  would  allow  life-leases  to  individuals,  covering 
such  acreage  as  could  be  used,  and  would  secure  the  value  of 
improvements  made  thereon.  It  would  only  aim  to  insure  the 
common  interests  of  the  people  at  large  from  the  danger  of 
monopoly.  The  socialist  dream  of  huge  industrial  and  trade 
organizations,  which  shall  regulate  all  production  and  exchange, 
under  the  supervision  perhaps  of  the  State,  is  simply  an  exten- 
sion of  the  principle  of  co-operation,  in  no  wise  interfering 
with  the  present  system  of  property. 

*  Contemporary  Review,  August,  1881. 


326  RUSSIAN  SOCIALISM. 

Nevertheless,  of  the  leaders  of  this  "  ism,"  as  of  how  many 
others,  the  sage's  word  holds  true  :  "  They  builded  wiser  than 
they  knew."  Meaning  only  co-operation,  the  Socialists  swell 
the  current  that  sets  towards  Communism,  in  the  large  sense  in 
which  I  use  the  term.  No  one  can  attentively  study  these 
various  systems  without  perceiving  that,  call  them  by  what  name 
we  will,  they  are  in  reality  communistic  ;  that  their  tendency  is 
to  narrow  the  area  of  private  property  and  enlarge  the  en- 
sphering body  of  common  property  ;  that  their  ideal  is  a  real 
commonwealth,  from  which  rises  the  inspiration  kindling  the 
enthusiasm  of  their  followers. 

Back  of  all  European  Socialism,  pressing  it  on,  looms  up 
Russian  Socialism.  This  believes  itself  destined  to  inspire 
and  guide  the  whole  European  movement. 

"  There  are  only  two  real  questions,"  said  Herzen, — "  the  social  question 
and  the  Russian  question  ;  and  these  two  are  one.  .  .  .  Socialism  will 
unite  the  two  factions,  the  European  revolutionary  with  the  Panslavonian."  * 

In  the  same  article,  Herzen  says  : 

The  deserts  of  the  Wolga  and  the  Oural  have  been,  from  all  time,  the 
bivouac  of  peoples  in  migration  ;  their  waiting-rooms  and  places  of  meet- 
ing ;  the  laboratory  of  nations,  where  in  silence  destiny  has  prepared  those 
swarms  of  savages,  to  let  them  loose  upon  the  dying  peoples,  upon  civiliza- 
tion in  consumption,  in  order  to  make  an  end  of  them.  .  .  .  The 
Russian  question  is  the  new  apparition  of  the  barbarians,  scenting  the  death 
agony,  screaming  their  memento  mori  in  the  ears  of  the  Old  World,  and 
ready  to  put  it  out  of  the  way  if  it  will  not  die  of  its  own  accord. 

For  this  regenerating  task,  Slavic  philosophy  thinks  the  Slavic 
force  has  been  held  back  so  long  in  the  history  of  Europe. 

*  "  Russia  and  the  Old  World."  Herzen.  Quoted  in  "  A  Russian 
Social  Panslavist  Programme,  "-C.  Tondini  de  Quarenghi,  Contemporary 
Review,  August,  1881. 


THE  ISSUE   OF  SOCIALISM. 

These  peoples  are  to  inundate  Europe  with  their  ideas,  to  build 
on  the  decadent  social  system  of  the  old  world  their  own  new 
world.  The  fundamental  Russian  institution  is  the  Mir — the 
collective  proprietorship  of  the  soil  and  its  equal  and  periodic 
apportionment  among  the  members  of  the  community.*  On 
this  basis,  the  Russian  Genius  is  seeking  to  rear  the  superstruc- 
ture of  her  society.  The  people  are  expecting  now  an  ukase 
to  divide  among  them  the  whole  Russian  soil,  still  largely  held 
by  the  aristocracy.  "  Land  and  Liberty "  is  the  significant 
watchword  of  the  revolution.  Workingmen  in  distant  cities 
keep  their  membership  in  the  native  commune,  model  their 
industrial  organizations  upon  the  Mir,  and  aspire  to  "  a  con- 
federation of  autonomous  communes."  f  Russian  influence, 
according  to  a  remarkable  article  in  the  Contemporary  Review 
for  August,  1881,  is  gradually  dominating  European  Socialism. 
This  is  what  might  be  expected  of  the  youngest,  freshest, 
largest  race  of  Europe.  And  Russia  is  Communism. 

"  Is  there,"  asked  Herzen,  "  in  the  nineteenth  century  any  other  serious 
question  besides  that  of  Communism  and  the  partition  of  the  land  ?  "  \ 

No  wonder  that  Cavour  said,  as  reported  of  him,  that  the 
Russian  Commune  will  create  more  dangers  to  Western  Europe 
than  any  army. 

If  out  of  the  political  revolution,  precipitated  by  the  attack 
of  the  forces  of  discontent  in  the  eighteenth  century  upon  the 
divine  right  of  kings  to  govern  wrong,  there  issued  the  govern- 
ment of  the  people,  by  the  people  and  for  the  people,  they 
may  not  be  far  wrong  who  predict  that  out  of  the  social  revo- 
lution, to  be  precipitated  by  the  attack  of  the  forces  of  discon- 

*  "  Russia,"  D.  Mackenzie  Wallace,  ch.  viii. 

\  "  Russia,"  D.  Mackenzie  Wallace,  chs.  viii.  and  ix. 

\  Contemporary  Review,  August,  1881. 


328  THIS  MOVEMENT  IS  PROGRESS. 

tent  in  the  nineteenth  and  twentieth  centuries  on  the  natural 
right  of  the  market  to  regulate  wrong,  there  will  issue  the  pro- 
prietorship of  the  people,  by  the  people  and  for  the  people — 
the  social  commonwealth  after  the  political  republic. 

XL 

Such  a  set  of  this  reactionary  current  in  society  will  convince 
most  men  that,  whatsoever  its.  volume  and  force,  it  is  not  a 
returning  sweep  in  the  cycling  ascent  of  humanity,  but  a  direct 
backward  movement  along  the  straight  line  of  progress,  an 
ebb-tide  of  the  waters  of  civilization.  The  fact  that  the  pat- 
tern of  this  '*  ism  "  is  framed  in  the  childhood  of  the  world, 
and  that  the  child  races  are  its  fashioners,  will  confirm  their 
belief  that  it  is  a  return  to  childishness  ;  forgetful  of  that 
vision  of  the  good  time  coming  for  the  weary  peoples  of  the 
earth  whereinto,  as  the  prophet  saw,  "  a  little  child  shall  lead 
them." 

The  leading  economists  of  the  most  orthodox  English  school 
give  abundant  testimony  to  the  coincidence  of  this  socialistic 
movement  with  the  lines  of  true  progress.  Herbert  Spencer 
devotes  a  chapter  in  the  "  Data  of  Ethics  "  to  unfolding  the  place 
of  this  movement  in  the  evolution  of  society.  John  Stuart 
Mill  furnishes  all  the  premises  socialism  needs  from  which  to 
draw  its  conclusions,  and  even  pressed  on  himself  to  most  of 
these  conclusions.  His  death  left  a  fragmentary  essay,  since 
published,  which  ranks  him  clearly  with  the  Socialists  of  the 
Chair.* 

The  historic  method  which  we  have  followed  gives  us,  how- 
ever, that  bird's-eye  view  which  best  indicates  the  relations  of 
this  new  "  ism."  As  we  have  already  seen,  the  retrospect  of 

"  Chapters  on  Socialism." 


THE  FAMILY  A    COMMUNISM.  329 

history  leads  us  to  expect  a  natural  return  toward  Communism 
when  the  individualistic  system  has  run  in  extremis.  The  signs 
of  the  present  indicate  this  position,  and  identify  the  social 
movement  with  such  a  recoil.  This  of  itself  should  assure  us 
that  we  are  witnessing  nature's  corrective  action. 

'  It  may  dispose  us  to  the  wise  attitude  of  Gamaliel  toward  a 
new  and  prejudiced  movement  if,  from  this  backward  look 
along  the  natural  evolution  of  society,  we  turn  our  eyes  for- 
ward, and,  following  the  tendencies  legitimately  working  in 
society,  can  see  them  developing  in  this  direction  from  within, 
by  purely  natural  processes. 

XII. 

In  each  of  the  three  great  institutes  of  society  there  lies 
bedded  a  core  of  Communism,  whose  development,  under 
quickening  conditions,  we  are  now  experiencing. 

The  family  is  at  its  core  a  Communism.  This  original  and 
natural  association  of  mankind  gives  free  play  to  the  individu- 
ality, and  Evolves  in  its  tender  culture  the  spiritual  personality  ; 
but  to  the  earliest  point  whither  we  can  trace  it,  and  through 
all  its  changing  forms,  it  has  been,  as  it  still  remains,  a  realized 
Communism.  It  has  one  common  store,  draws  from  one  com- 
mon purse,  partakes  of  one  common  table,  dwells  in  one  com- 
mon home.  Personal  possessions  there  may  be  for  each 
member  of  the  household  and  special  purses  for  some,  but  all 
private  property  is  ensphered  within  a  common  property 
How  could  there  be  the  life  in  common  which  makes  the 
family  so  divine  an  institution,  unless  this  soul  of  the  home, 
this  spiritual  communion,  had  its  enclothing  body,  this  material 
Communism  ?  The  social  crystallization  which  forms  upon 
the  family  must  be  in  some  form  a  Communism. 


330  THE    CHURCH  A    COMMUNISM. 

XIII. 

The  Church  is,  at  its  core,  a  Communism.  As  we  are 
rightly  never  allowed  to  forget,  in  its  zeal  for  the  salvation  of 
souls,  the  Church  is  primarily  the  organization  for  the  devel- 
opment of  the  divine  individuality,  wherein  lies  at  once  the 
seed  of  personal  life  in  the  heavens  and  the  regenerative  force 
of  social  life  upon  the  earth.*  It  certainly  opens  abundant 
scope  for  the  energies  and  supplies  abundant  motive  power  to 
the  interests  of  the  individual.  Indeed,  its  failures  seem  to 
me  to  grow  chiefly  out  of  its  disproportionate  cultivation  of 
the  individuality.  For  the  Church  is  also,  as  we  are  perhaps 
not  sufficiently  reminded,  the  organization  for  the  evolution  of 
the  sacred  social  order,  the  kingdom  of  heaven  slowly  coming 
forth  upon  the  earth,  the  sphere  for  the  true  inter-relation  of 
the  true  individualities.  The  Church  holds  at  once  the  ideals 
of  individuality  and  of  association.  It  is  a  republic  which  has 
of  necessity  its  res  publics  ;  and  these  public  things  constitute 
it  a  commonwealth,  a  communion  of  spirit  which,  without 
interfering  with  private  possessions,  tends  to  sublimate  them 
into  a  free  Communism. 

The  historic  foundations  of  the  Christian  Church  were  laid 

*  Josiah  Quincy  says,  in  one  of  the  reports  of  the  Boston  Co-operative 
Store,  that  "  co-operation  requires  good  men."  Noyes,  in  his  "  History  of 
American  Socialisms,"  quotes  the  "  Old  Mortality"  of  American  Socialism, 
A.  J.  Macdonald,  who  gave  up  years  to  visiting  the  sites  of  our  various 
social  experiments  and  to  gathering  up  their  records,  in  curious  confirmation 
of  Mr.  Quincy 's  dictum.  "Looking  back  now  over  the  entire  course  of 
this  history,  we  discover  a  remarkable  similarity  in  the  symptoms  that  man- 
ifested themselves  in  the  transitory  Communities,  and  almost  entire  unan- 
imity in  the  witnesses  who  testify  as  to  the  causes  of  their  failure.  General 
Depravity,  all  say,  is  the  villain  of  the  whole  story."  He  confesses  pathet- 
ically that,  in  his  previous  hopes  of  Socialism,  he  "  had  imagined  mankind 
better  than  they  are." — "  Review  and  Results,"  ch.  xlvii. 


HEBREW  SOCIALISM.  331 

in  the  Hebrew  polity,  which,  whether  in  an  original  plan  by 
Moses  or  in  subsequent  designs  overlaying  his  rough  draft, 
whether  actually  operative  at  any  period  or  only  a  paper  con- 
stitution, was  a  genuine  Communism.*  This  constitution 
nationalized  the  land  of  Canaan  ;  vested  the  title  in  the  head 
of  the  State,  Jehovah  ;  apportioned  it  among  the  families  of  the 
tribes ;  limited  the  term  of  all  transfers  between  the  people  ; 
vacated  all  real-estate  bargains  at  the  end  of  every  fifty  years, 
restoring  then  to  each  family  its  inalienable  right  to  its  share 
of  the  soil  ;  and  thus  prevented  the  accumulation  of  great 
estates  and  any  possible  monopoly  of  the  first  resources  of 
life,  f  It  passed  all  debtors  through  an  act  of  bankruptcy 
every  seven  years,  and  guarded  thus  against  the  enslaving  action 
of  debt,  which  has  repeated  itself  so  commonly  in  history. J 
It  even  pronounced  all  interest  usury,  and  thus  radically 
estopped  the  manifold  oppressions  of  unscrupulous  capital 
that  every  society  has  experienced.  §  This  polity  thus  sub- 
soiled  Israel  with  a  real  Communism.  It  is  certainly  curious 
that  the  portion  of  the  Church  which  professes  to  regard  the 
Old  Testament  as  divinely  dictated  and  oracularly  authorita- 
tive should  so  successfully  dodge  this  disagreeable  fact.  The 
children  of  this  world  find  it  hard  sometimes  to  prove  wiser 
than  the  children  of  light. 

The  plan  of  Jesus,  in  so  far  as  seeing  clearly  we  may  speak 
positively,  followed  this  historic  groundwork.  If  we  accept 
Luke's  Gospel  as  a  trustworthy  guide,  we  cannot  miss  the 
broadly  drawn  idiosyncrasy  of  the  Nazarene  ;  and  if  we  dis- 

*  Leviticus  xxv.,  23.  •)•  Leviticus  xxv.,  13-17;  xxvii.,  23-28. 

\  Deuteronomy  xv. ,  1-5. 

§  Exodus  xxii.,  25  ;  Leviticus  xxv.,  36,  37  ;  Deuteronomy  xxiii.,  19,  20 ; 
Nehemiah  v.,  7,  10,  12  ;  Psalm  xv.,  5  ;  Proverbs  xxviii.,  8  ;  Jeremiah  xv., 
10  ;  Ezekiel  xviii.,  13  ;  xxii.,  12. 


332  SOCIALISM  OF  JESUS. 

credit  Luke,  and  see  in  this  delineation  the  tracings  of  Essenic 
tradition  and  the  colorings  of  socialistic  tendency-writing,  yet 
the  features  of  the  Christ  therein  sketched  appear  in  the  por- 
traiture of  the  other  gospelers,  though  in  milder  light,  and  we 
need  not  hesitate  to  trust  the  picture  outlined. 

Jesus  was  a  pronounced  Communist — not  indeed  such  as 
we  conjure  up  when  the  irreverent  ban  mot  of  Camille  Des- 
moulins  echoes  in  our  ears,*  but  rather  such  as  rises  before  us 
in  the  lofty  confession  of  that  crotchety,  grand  soul,  John 
Ruskin  : 

For  indeed  I  am  myself  a  Communist  of  the  old  school,  reddest  also  of 
the  red.  .  .  .  We  Communists  of  the  old  school  think  that  our  property 
belongs  to  everybody  and  everybody's  property  to  us.f 

Jesus  appears  to  have  always  lived  in  a  Communism.  For 
thirty  years,  he  was  a  member  of  the  Family  Commune  in  the 
Nazarite  carpenter's  home.  During  the  three  years  of  his  pub- 
lic life,  he  was  the  centre  of  the  little  brotherhood  of  thirteen 
which  he  himself  formed,  and  which  seems  to  have  had  one 
purse  in  common,  from  which  they  drew  for  the  common 
needs.  \  The  members  of  that  Communism  literally  gave  up 
all  their  possessions  to  follow  the  Master.  § 

The  constant  attitude  of  Jesus  toward  the  society  of  his  day 
buttressed  this  example.  He  evidently  was  at  one  with  the 
Hebrew  prophets  in  their  radical  judgment  on  the  competitive 
civilization  of  Israel.  ||  It  was  repulsive  to  him,  as  fostering  the 
prudential  virtues  which  we  so  highly  esteem  and  he  so  lightly 

*  "  Le  bon  Sans-culotte,  Jesus." 
\  "  Fors  Clavigera,"  John  Ruskin,  Part  ii.,  ch.  vii. 
|Johnxii.,  6  ;  per  contra  Matthew  xvii.,  27. 
§  Matthew  iv.,  19,  20  ;  ix.,  9. 

|  Matthew  xi.,  1-6  ;  xix.,  24  ;_Tcxii.,  1-14;  Luke  vi.,  20  et  seq.;  xvi.,  19 
-25  ;  John  xv.,  19  ;  xvii.,  14-16. 


SOCIALISM  OF  JESUS.  333 

valued,  and  as  cultivating  the  material,  worldly,  selfish  instincts 
in  which  he  found  the  secret  of  human  ill.*  His  language  to 
the  rich  was  radical.  "  How  hardly  shall  they  that  have  riches 
enter  into  the  kingdom  of  God."  f  The  counsel  of  perfection 
he  offered  the  rich  young  ruler  was,  "  Go,  sell  that  thou  hast 
and  give  to  the  poor,  and  thou  shalt  have  treasure  in  heaven, 
and  come  follow  me."  \  He  warned  men  against  the  love  of 
money,  the  motor  of  our  civilization,  and  saw  in  Mammon,  the 
gain-god,  the  social  Satan  whose  service  is  irreconcilable  with 
the  service  of  God.  §  He  opened  his  ministry,  according  to 
Luke,  by  reading  in  the  synagogue  of  his  native  village  this 
passage  from  Isaiah  :  "  The  spirit  of  the  Lord  is  upon  me,  be 
cause  he  hath  anointed  me  to  preach  good  tidings  to  the  poor, 
...  to  proclaim  the  acceptable  year  of  the  Lord  "  | ;  accord- 
ing to  Mark,  "preaching  the  glad  tidings  of  the  kingdom  of 
God,"  1"  the  social  regeneration.  As  plainly  as  words  and  deeds 
could  speak,  Jesus  regarded  our  competitive  civilization  not 
merely  as  falling  short  of  the  divine  ideals  of  social  life,  but  as 
running  counter  to  them  ;  and  he  sharply  turned  the  faces  of 
those  who  sought  the  kingdom  of  the  Good  One  and  his  right- 
eousness away  from  the  kingdom  of  the  Evil  One  and  his  un- 
righteousness. He  was  so  understood  by  his  hearers,  and  was 
derided  for  his  Quixotic  teaching.**  The  ethics  of  Jesus  found 
no  nidus  in  our  social  system  ;  his  religion  asphyxiated  in  its 
atmosphere.  Amid  the  evils  growing  out  of  a  society  based  on 
private  property  and  subordinating-  public  things  to  personal 

*  Matthew  vi.,   19,  20,  24-32  ;  xii.,  22  ;  Mark  iv.,  19  ;  Luke  viii.,   14  ; 
xii.,  13-34  ;  xvi.,  13-15. 
f  Mark  x.,  23. 

\  Matthew  xix.,  21  ;  Mark  x.,  21  et  seq.,  29,  30  ;  Luke  xviii.,  22,  23,  28.   j 
§  Matthew  vi.,  24.  |  Luke  iv. ,  18. 

,  14.  **  Luke  xvi.,  14. 


334  PENTECOSTAL    COMMUNISM. 

things,  common  interests  to  individual  interests,  he  held  out, 
as  the  hope  of  man,  a  true  Communism. 

But  this  Communism  of  Jesus  was  no  coarse,  hard,  literal 
system,  laid  down  as  the  order  of  society  before  the  world  was 
ready  for  it,  decreed  arbitrarily  by  statute  and  to  be  enforced 
rigidly  by  ecclesiastical  authority.  It  was  left  for  the  enact- 
ment of  "  the  law-making  power  within,"  when  inspired  from 
himself.  It  was,  as  Renan  finely  says,  "  the  delicate  commun- 
ism of  a  flock  of  God's  children."  *  The  elder  brother  lived 
it,  and  thus  breathed  its  spirit  within  the  other  children. 

When  his  spirit  breathed  forth  again  from  their  souls,  his 
ideal  shaped  itself  in  their  aspirations,  the  natural  response  to 
that  inspiration.  The  full-flooding  sense  of  a  life  in  common, 
awakened  in  these  happy  children  of  the  heavenly  Father,  sub- 
merged the  highest,  driest  levels  of  selfishness,  overflowed  the 
coast-lines  of  private  property,  obliterated  all  boundaries  of 
meum  and  tuum,  and  spreading  over  the  nascent  Church  re- 
solved the  communion  of  the  disciples  into  the  Communism 
whose  record  on  the  shores  of  time  still  marks  the  high-water 
reach  of  the  Christian  spirit.  "  And  all  that  believed  were  to- 
gether, and  had  all  things  common  ;  and  sold  their  possessions 
and  goods,  and  parted  them  to  all,  according  as  any  man  had 
need."f  Beautiful,  spontaneous,  momentary  crystallization  of 
the  forces  of  Christian  Socialism  into  the  figure  of  the  ideal 
order.  Too  delicate  to  endure,  like  all  premature  fruit,  it 
would  have  decayed,  as  it  soon  showed  signs  of  doing,  into 
social  putrescence,  if  it  had  not  been  swept  away  in  the  over- 
throw of  Jerusalem  and  its  little  Christian  community.  Too 
ethereal  to  bear  the  coming  down  from  "  the  thin  air  of  life's 
supremest  heights,"  that  vision  has  lived  on  in  the  memory  of 

*  "  Life  of  Jesus,"  Ernest  Renan,  ch.  xi. 
•j-Actsii.,  44,  45- 


PRIMITIVE    CHRISTIAN    SOCIALISM.  335 

the  Church,  as  the  transfiguration  of  society  unto  which  in 
every  age  of  renewed  inspiration  the  s'ocial  aspiration  should 
rise.  From  that  time  on,  each  new  movement  of  spiritual  life 
has  revived  this  dream  of  the  Mount,  and  stirred  some  effort 
at  its  realization.  When  we  rightly  restore  the  early  Church, 
we  shall  probably  find  a  great  number  of  communistic  socie- 
ties, Christian  Essenism  in  one  form  and  another.  Through 
the  later  periods  of  church  history,  each  wave  of  impulse  tow- 
ard personal  holiness  was  followed  by  a  Avave  of  impulse  tow- 
ard social  justice,  in  the  brotherhoods  and  sisterhoods,  the 
mendicant  orders  and  communistic  sects,  of  the  Dark  Ages 
and  the  Middle  Ages.*  The  Reformation,  with  its  mighty 
spiritual  quickening,  spawned  on  Europe  a  swarm  of  inchoate 
socialisms,  fanatical,  grotesque,  impossible  ;  witnessing  never- 
theless to  the  yearnings  of  the  new  life,  f  German  pietism, 
probably  the  simplest,  sweetest  type  of  spiritual  life  produced 
by  modern  Christianity,  has  tended  toward  Socialism  ;  and  our 
American  communistic  societies  have  been  chiefly  the  work  of 
these  literal  disciples  of  the  Nazarene.  J  Our  own  country  has 
curiously  suggested  the  relation  between  individual  inspiration 
and  social  aspiration  in  religion.  There  has  been  a  rhythmical 
alternation  between  these  two  movements.  Each  wave  of  re- 
vivalism has  been  followed  by  a  wave  of  Socialism.  After  Net- 
tleton,  in  1817,  came  Robert  Owen,  in  1824  ;  after  Finney,  in 
1831-33,  came  the  Fourierite  enthusiasm,  in  1842-43  ;  after 
the  great  awakening  of  1857,  the  social  movement  which  might 
have  followed  was  withheld  by  the  civil  war  ;  after  the  practi- 
cal Moody  has  come  the  practical  co-operative  efforts  now  be- 

*  The  Regular  Orders  and  the  irregular  associations  of  the  Brethren  of 
the  Free  Spirit,  Fratricelli,  Pauvres  de  Lyons,  etc. 
f  Anabaptists,  Gospel  Poor,  etc. 
%  "  Communistic  Societies  of  the  United  States,"  Charles  Nordhoff,  p.  387. 


336  SPIRITUAL  INSPIRA  TION  AND  SOCIAL  ASPIRA  TION. 

ing  widely  made.*  First  the  regeneration  of  the  soul,  then 
the  regeneration  of  society.  No  dislike  we  may  feel  for  the 
methods  of  either  of  these  movements  should  blind  us  to  their 
inter-relation  and  their  combined  trend. 

Wherever  the  local  churches  are  alive  to-day,  they  are  feel- 
ing the  urgency  of  the  social  problem,  and  are,  even  though 
unconsciously,  seeking  its  solution  in  that  unwritten  Com- 
munism which  holds  every  gift  and  power  as  a  trust  for  the 
common  service,  and  all  wealth  a  stewardship  for  the  common 
needs  of  the  brotherhood.  In  the  house  of  the  Christian 
family  stands  the  table  of  the  All-Father,  where  the  children 
gather  for  the  common  meal  of  the  community.  Abiding 
sign  of  society's  salvation  from  slavery  and  strife  and  every 
sin  of  selfishness,  in  the  holy  communion  which  must  ulti- 
mately build  round  itself  a  righteous  Communism  ! 

The  deepening  life  of  the  Church  and  its  growing  pressure 
against  the  unsympathetic  environment  of  our  competitive 
civilization  must  produce  tenser  yearnings  of  the  Christian 
conscience  to  realize  its  ideals  of  the  common  life  in  some 
"  ism  "  of  common  property.  Following  upon  other  revivals, 
such  as  we  all  believe  in — the  upflowings  within  the  soul  of 
the  Eternal  Spirit  ensphering  us  all,  in  whom  we  live  and 
move  and  have  our  being — there  will  come  other  efforts  after  a 
Christian  brotherhood  ;  local  churches  perhaps  essaying  some 
form  of  voluntary  Communism  ;  which  will  fail  only  to  be 
tried  again,  till  gradually  that  spring  blossom  of  the  Pentecost 
opens  into  the  full-blown  fruit  of  summer,  and,  the  spirit  filling 
all  men,  it  shall  come  to  pass  that  the  multitude  of  them  that 
believe  shall  be  of  one  heart  and  soul,  and  not  one  of  them 
shall  say  that  aught  of  the  things  which  he  possesses  is  his  own, 
but  they  will  have  all  things  common. 

*  "  History  of  American  Socialisms,"  Noyes,  p.  25. 


THE   STATE  A    COMMONWEALTH.  337 

Thus  will  that  notable  judgment  of  a  well-known  economist 
fulfil  itself,  as  the  Christian  ideal  slowly  possesses  humanity  : 
"  If  Christianity  were  taught  and  understood  conformably  to 
the  spirit  of  its  Founder,  the  existing  social  organization  could 
not  last  a  day."  * 

Thus,  too,  will  verify  itself  the  great  word  of  Mazzini  to 
the  misguided  men  of  Paris,  seeking  a  human  brotherhood 
without  any  uplook  to  a  divine  fatherhood,  and  so  finding  only 
the  fury  of  1792  and  the  fires  of  1871  :  "  Every  political  ques- 
tion in  this  age  is  rapidly  becoming  a  social  question,  and 
every  social  question  a  religious  question."  f 

XIV. 

The  State,  the  social  organism  crowning  itself  with  a  govern- 
ing head,  as  the  body  drawn  around  the  soul  of  society, 
might  be  expected  to  show  a  structure  corresponding  to  the 
form  unconsciously  stamped  in  the  Family,  to  the  ideal  cher- 
ished in  the  Church.  And,  if  we  lay  bare  the  anatomy  of 
society,  we  shall  find  that  its  nervous  system  is  a  fine-fibred 
Communism,  which,  as  the  body  increasingly  becomes  the  ex- 
pression of  the  soul,  is  spiritualizing  the  more  material  vascular 
system  and  working  a 'slow  transfiguration.  An  organism  im- 
plies separate  members  and  functions  co-ordinated  into  a  com- 
mon life.  It  cannot  be  an  organism  without  having  individual 
organs  ;  but  it  is  an  organism,  inasmuch  as  these  are  bound 
together  in  a  corporate  oneness  which  has  all  things  common. 
The  true  growth  of  any  organism,  of  the  social  organism,  is  to 
be  found  in  the  ascendency  of  this  organic  life  in  common 
over  the  functional  life  in  separateness  ;  in  the  equalizing  of 

*  "  Primitive  Property,"  Laveleye,  Intro.,  p.  xxxi. 
f  "  Letters  to  the  Paris  Commune,"  Joseph  Mazzini,  1871. 


33$   ECONOMIC  LAWS  WORKING  FOR  A  COMMONWEALTH. 

the  circulation  through  every  member  of  the  body,  in  the 
carrying  on  of  that  secretion  from  the  blood  which  each  organ 
makes  for  its  own  upbuilding  so  as  that  its  private  enrichment 
shall  but  subserve  the  commonwealth,  and  all  the  parts  shall 
say,  4<  We  are  members  one  of  another." 

The  natural  movement  of  society  then  should  show  to-day  a 
twofold  action — the  repression  of  excessive  individualism  and 
the  stimulation  of  defective  association,  with  a  consequent 
narrowing  of  the  area  of  common  property  ;  which  is  the 
double  tendency  we  see  working  under  purely  economic  laws. 

Economists  are  the  authority  for  declaring  that  prices, 
profits  and  interest  are  slowly  sinking  towards  a  minimum.* 

The  shrinkage  of  prices  and  profits  means  that  the  natural 
limits  of  individual  fortunes  are  gradually  narrowing.  Co- 
lossal fortunes,  it  is  true,  are  still  to  be  accumulated,  and  show 
no  signs  of  speedily  disappearing  from  the  earth. f  But  colos- 
sal fortunes  are  always  of  doubtful  legitimacy,  if  not  of  open 
illegitimacy,  and  are  therefore  unnatural.  They  are  the  run- 
ning to  seed  of  the  system  of  private  property,  a  premonition 
of  decay,  a  call  for  the  scythe.  They  have  perhaps  never  been 
so  vast  as  now  since  the  Roman  Empire,  and  therein  is  their 
interpretation.  They  introduced  the  decline  and  fall  of  Rome. 
They  drained  off  the  blood  of  the  Empire,  and  exhausted  its 

*  "Principles  of  Political  Economy,"  J.  S.  Mill,  book  iv.,  ch.  ii.,  iii., 
and  iv. 

"  Manual  of  Political  Economy,"  H.  Fawcett,  ch.  xiii. 

Mr.  Carey  ("  Manual  of  Social  Science,"  ch.  xxxv.)adds  rent  also,  rela- 
tively though  not  absolutely. 

f  In  1830,  it  is  supposed  that  there  was  but  one  man  in  New  York  worth 
$1,000,000.  Now  there  are  estimated  to  be  five  hundred.  (New  York 
Times.} 

Five  (5)  per  cent,  of  the  city  owns  ninety-five  (95)  per  cent,  of  its  total 
wealth. 


PRIVATE  PROPERTY  NARROWING.  339 

corporate  life  in  feeding  their  cancerous  growth.*  We  might 
fear  that  modern  society  would  succumb  to  this  impoverishing 
wealth,  if  we  did  not  feel  that  its  very  dangerousness  was  pro- 
ducing a  reaction  which  holds  out  the  hope  of  ridding  the  sys- 
tem of  these  fungoid  growths.  One  monster  millionnaire  does 
more  to  dispose  the  average  man  to  regard  favorably  that  most 
radical  of  measures  for  the  limitation  of  private  fortunes,  a 
graduated  income-tax,  than  the  most  fiery  arguments  of  So- 
cialists. We  are  to-day  in  the  meeting  of  the  waters.  The 
ebb-tide  is  still  running  strongly  out,  while  the  flood-tide  is 
setting  in  beneath  the  surface.  The  millionnaire  will  some 
day  be  an  economic  fossil,  a  social  plesiosaur  ;  though  that 
day  will  not  be  to-morrow. 

The  shrinkage  of  interest — a  world-wide  phenomenon — 
means  that  nature's  forces  are  preparing  for  the  abolition  of 
the  non-productive  classes  who  now  live  in  luxury.  When 
there  is  no  increase  of  money  except  as  it  is  married  to  work, 
then  most  literally  will  the  law  be  obeyed — "  If  any  man  will 
not  work,  neither  shall  he  eat."  And  when  all  work,  there  will 
be  more  bread  eaten  and  less  cake.  As  the  needs  of  society 
make  burdensome  a  class  living  apart  from  legitimate  labor, 

*  Prof.  Seeley  says  that  "the  Empire  perished  for  want  of  men." — 
"  Roman  Imperialism,  and  Other  Lectures  and  Essays,"  p.  54.  He  does 
not,  however,  emphasize  one  of  the  chief  causes  of  this  diminution  of 
population.  "  Latifundia  perdidere  Italiam,"  wrote  Pliny.  Quoted  in 
"  Primitive  Property,"  p.  30. 

How  the  growth  of  great  estates  led  to  the  paucity  of  population,  La- 
veleye  hints,  in  saying  :  "  A  disinherited  prole taire  replaces  the  class  of  small 
citizen  proprietors  who  were  the  very  marrow  of  the  republic." — "  Primi- 
tive Property, "  p.  30.  So  that  there  was  meaning  in  the  ancient  Roman 
saying,  "  that  he  was  not  to  be  counted  a  good  citizen,  but  rather  a  danger- 
ous man  to  the  State,  who  could  not  content  himself  with  six  acres  of 
land." 


34°  PUBLIC  PROPERTY    WIDENING. 

above  the  comparatively  modest  affluence  which  such  toil  alone 
can  win,  the  conditious  of  society  are  making  it  impossible.* 
But,  of  course,  by  work  I  mean  not  material  manufacture 
merely.  He  is  a  true  workman  and  a  mighty  producer  whose 
^  apology  is  : 

One  harvest  from  thy  field 
Homeward  brought  the  oxen  strong  : 

A  second  crop  thine  acres  yield, 
Which  I  gather  in  a  song. 

At  the  same  time  that  the  maximum  limits  of  private  prop- 
erty are  narrowing,  the  area  of  participants  in  private  property 
is  widening,  and  the  ratio  of  general  participation  increasing. 
Laborers  were  formerly  incapable  of  holding  property,  being 
properties  themselves.  They  are  now  coming  to  be  small  pro- 
prietors. The  American  artisan  can  own  his  home,  the  French 
peasant  his  cottage  and  wee  bit  of  a  farm.  Even  the  negro 
has  his  mule  and  ten  acres.  With  advancing  intelligence, 
labor  demands  advancing  remuneration.  This  is  denied  as  yet 
in  many  lands  by  the  false  conditions  of  society,  which  other 
forces  are  moving  steadily  to  right.  Wages  tend  upon  the 
whole  upward,  toward  the  possible  maximum.  Labor  absorbs 
thus  an  increasing  proportion  of  profits,  as  it  wins  freedom 
and  learns  association,  and  spreads  it  over  an  ever-widening 
area,  in  a  general  levelling  up.  f  As  Mr.  Carey  formulated  the 
two  tendencies,  profits  decrease  relatively  while  increasing 
absolutely,  and  wages  increase  both  relatively  and  absolutely. J 

Equality  is   the   goal   toward   which   economic   forces   are 

*  Cf.    Mill,  vol.  ii.,  p.  341. 

f  "  Social  Science  and  National  Economy,"  R.  E.  Thompson,  p.  138, 
et  seq. 

\  "  Manual  of  Political  Economy,"  H.  C.  Carey,  ch.  xxxiv. 


GROWTH  OF  ASSOCIATION.  341 

working,  as  liberty  was  the  goal  toward  which  political  forces 
have  been  working,  and  fraternity  is  the  crown  and  conciliation 
of  both.* 

Economic  laws  are  at  the  same  time  working  naturally 
toward  a  widening  of  the  area  and  an  intensifying  of  the 
action  of  association  in  every  sphere  of  the  business  world. 
Alike  in  trade,  in  manufactures  and  in  agriculture  this  current 
is  perceptible.  Its  volume  and  momentum  increase  yearly. 
Capital  is  rapidly  passing  out  of  the  stage  of  individual  action 
into  a  period  of  associative  action.  It  is  everywhere  combin- 
ing and  thus  multiplying  its  power.  We  are  in  the  age  of  the 
joint-stock  company.  Private  property,  for  its  own  preserva- 
tion and  increase,  is  developing  into  associative  property.  Com- 
modities can  be  produced  and  exchanged  most  cheaply  on  a 
large  scale,  and  thus  private  capital  is  being  forced  into  cor- 
porate capital.  A  new  personality  appears  in  law — the  corpor- 
ation. Corporations  may  be  soulless,  but  they  certainly  are 
not  bodiless.  They  have  already  assumed  gigantic  proportions. 
Their  immensity  is  the  measure  of  the  wealth  that  is  being 
created  and  held  in  common. 

Labor  is  slowly  learning  the  lesson  that  capital  has  first 
mastered.  In  union  there  is  wealth  as  well  as  strength.  The 
small  savings  of  individuals,  which  separately  were  powerless 
to  make  the  average  workman  more  than  a  mere  hired  hand, 
are  being  thrown  together  into  a  common  fund,  and  thus  they 
create  credit  and  capital  for  the  association,  on  which  the 
members  lift  themselves  to  comfort  and  independence.  Co- 
operation is  preached  everywhere  with  the  enthusiasm  of  a 
new  gospel.  Co-operative  stores,  co-operative  manufactories, 
co-operative  building  societies,  co-operative  credit  banks  are 

*  Cf.  "  Principles  of  Political  Economy,"  J.  S.  Mill,  book  iv.,  ch.  vii., 
on  the  probable  future  of  the  laboring  classes. 


342  GROWTH  OF  ASSOCIATION. 

springing  up  marvellously  in  Europe,  and  are  beginning  to 
make  their  influence  felt  in  this  country.  Co-operation  already 
has  a  history,  and  a  noble  one.*  Its  power  to-day  is  wholly 
unrealized  by  those  who  have  not  studied  its  growth,  f 

Agriculture,  the  slowest  industry  in  change,  is  feeling  the 
new  current.  While  France  has  successfully  applied  co-opera- 
tion to  industrial  production,  England  to  distribution,  Ger- 
many to  the  creation  of  capital,  the  United  States  seem  likely 
to  develop  first  its  application  to  agriculture.  Creameries, 
cheeseries,  etc.,  late  and  rapid  growths,  show  that  farmers  are 
finding  that  they  can  combine  with  great  economy  of  time  and 
labor,  and  thus  secure  larger  profits.  The  expensive  machin- 
ery of  modern  agriculture  suggests  conjoint  ownership.  The 
sudden  growth  in  the  far  West  of  bonanza  farms  is  one  of 
the  most  striking  signs  of  that  abnormal  development  of 
individualism  which  threatens  danger  to  the  corporate  life,  and 
so  begins  to  rally  the  organic  forces  toward  a  crisis  and  a  new 
epoch.  J  Farms  half  the  size  of  a  State  will  crush  the  compe- 
tition of  small  farmers,  or  drive  them  to  combine  in  order  to 
compete.  § 

The  long  conflict  between  capital  and  labor  draws  to  a  peace. 
Capital  proposes  its  protocol — industrial  partnership.  Em- 
ployer and  employees  are  to  be  co-partners  in  a  common  enter- 

*  Cf.     "History  of  Co-operation,"  George  Jacob  Holyoake. 

f  "Co-operation  as  a  Business,"  C.  Barnard.  There  are  1,500  co-oper- 
ative stores  in  Great  Britain.  Of  these,  1,170  report  500,000  members, 
$25,000,000  paid-up  share  capital,  and  $4,500,000  borrowed  capital,  mostly 
loaned  by  members  ;  annual  purchases  of  over  $80,500,000  ;  stock  of 
goods  on  hand,  $10,000,000  ;  net  annual  profits,  $7,100,000. 

\  Cf.     "  Land  and  Labor,"  by  D.  Godwin  Moody. 

§  Mr.  Moody  reported,  from  personal  observation,  farms  of  10,000, 
50,000,  100,000,  and  250,000  acres.  One  California  estate  covers  350,000 
acres,  or  547  square  miles.  Rhode  Island  has  i,O46'square  miles. 


SOCIAL  PROPERTIES.  343 

prise  ;  and  each  workman  is  to  receive  a  share  of  the  profits 
over  a  fixed  percentage,  pro  rata  to  his  wages,  /.  e.,  to  his  skill 
and  service.  The  reproductive  power  of  the  plant  is  thus  to 
be  increased  by  putting  behind  the  hands  that  good  old  Eng- 
lish quality,  "heart,"  and  by  making  it  the  interest  of  all  to 
heighten  the  yield  of  the  common  property.* 

Competition  is  thus  begetting  co-operation. 

Above  these  purely  economic  developments,  in  the  varied 
spheres  of  social  life,  this  same  principle  is  working  to  build 
up  an  increasing  body  of  common  properties.  The  multiplicity 
of  interests  shared  among  men  leads  to  a  steady  growth  of 
societies,  clubs  and  organizations  of  all  sorts,  having  social, 
literary,  musical,  artistic,  scientific,  philosophic  aims  in  com- 
mon, and  holding  thereunto  more  or  less  of  common  property 
— from  the  minute-book  of  the  youth's  debating  society  up  to 
the  Union  League  palace.  The  wants  and  needs  of  the 
poor  are  calling  into  existence  an  increasing  number  of  insti- 
tutions for  their  relief,  enjoyment  and  culture,  supplied  by  the 
growing  public  spirit  of  the  wealthier  classes,  who  are  learning 
to  recognize  in  their  private  property  a  trust  for  the  common- 
wealth— baths,  hospitals,  asylums,  orphans'  homes,  gymnasia, 
industrial  schools,  reading-rooms,  museums,  art  galleries  and 
colleges. 

The  social  crystallization  is  dissolving  and  recombining  in 
forms  of  higher  association. 

This  process,  traceable  everywhere  through  the  economic 
and  social  world,  is  working  slowly  upward  toward  the  devel- 
opment of  a  State  which  shall  be  the  organic  expression  of  a 

*  Cf.  "  The  Association  of  Capital  with  Labor"  ;  being  the  laws  and 
regulations  of  mutual  assurance  regulating  the  social  palace  at  Guise, 
France — Jean  Baptiste  Andre  Godin,  the  founder.  Published  by  the 
Woman's  Social  Science  Association,  New  York. 


344  ECONOMIC  FUNCTIONS  OF   THE   STATE. 

real  commonwealth,  in  a  vast  body  of  common  property.  Even 
now,  government,  local  and  general,  discharges  a  multiplicity 
of  functions,  for  which  it  necessarily  holds  and  manages  a  very 
large  public  property.  It  opens  roads  and  streets,  paves,  lights 
and  sweeps  them  ;  constructs  and  works  sewerage  systems  ; 
owns,  as  the  ward  of  the  people,  all  unappropriated  lands,  all 
lines  of  natural  transportation,  rivers,  lakes,  sea-coasts,  and 
surveys,  lights,  guards  them  ;  distributes  letters  through  huge 
postal  organizations  ;  observes  the  weather  from  its  scattered 
signal  stations  ;  secures  property  and  person  by  costly  fire  and 
police  departments  ;  administers  justice  through  its  courts  and 
prisons  ;  educates  the  children  of  the  people  in  its  hosts  of 
school-houses  ;  watches  over  the  public's  bodily  well-being 
through  its  boards  of  health  ;  cares  for  the  poor,  the  sick,  the 
maimed,  the  insane  ;  washes  the  public  in  free  baths,  recreates 
it  in  free  parks,  instructs  it  in  free  zoological  gardens  and  mu- 
seums of  natural  history  and  art,  and  does  all  sorts  of  similar 
things  in  a  way  which  should  fill  the  soul  of  the  laissez-faire 
theorist  with  horror  and  disgust,  but  which  none  the  less  adds 
vastly  to  the  general  "health  and  wealth."  In  this  huge  body 
of  State  properties,  each  citizen  is  co-proprietor,  and  thus  a 
member  of  an  actual  Communism. 

The  tendency  is  steadily  in  the  direction  of  multiplying  these 
common  services  on  the  part  of  the  State,  and  thus  of  adding 
to  these  common  properties.  Many  confluent  streams  swell 
this  current.  As  the  social  organism  develops  an  ever-height- 
ening complexity — its  inevitable  progress,  according  to  Mr. 
Spencer's  well-known  dictum — the  presence  of  a  co-ordinating 
brain  becomes  more  essential  in  the  head.*  To  preserve  har- 

*  "  The  necessity  for  a  co-ordinating  power  appears  therefore  to  exist  in 
the  direct  ratio  .of  development." — "Manual  of  Social  Science,"  H.  C. 
Carey,  p.  507. 


CONSOLIDATION  IN  BUSINESSES.  345 

monious  interaction  among  these  complex  functions,  the  super- 
vision and  superintendence  of  the  State  are  more  constantly  de- 
manded. The  increasingly  scientific  character  of  agriculture 
and  industry  calls  for  that  large  direction  of  investigation  and 
experiment  which  the  State  alone  can  supply.  The  growth  of 
international  relations  binds  countries  together  in  interests 
L  which  governments  alone  can  watch  and  foster.  Departments 
and  bureaus  thus  multiply  and  enlarge,  and  the  store  of  public 
properties  grows  continually. 

The  rapid  concentration  of  capital  which  is  everywhere  seen 
— many  small  dealers  disappearing  in  one  large  dealer,  rival 
firms  gravitating  into  a  few  all-swallowing  firms,  competing 
companies  consolidating  into  enormous  corporations — cannot 
be  prevented.  Too  many  forces  are  working  together  to  bring 
about  this  movement.  Neither  is  it  to  be  wholly  deplored. 
Since  doing  business  on  a  large  scale  cheapens  productions  and 
lessens  the  cost  of  exchange,  it  thus  makes  for  the  general  good, 
so  long  as  work  is  open  for  those  who  are  thus  displaced.* 

But  the  dangerous  power  which  these  monopolies  are  de- 
veloping, f  the  burdensome  taxation  which  they  lay  upon 

*  Simple  as  this  last  clause  seems,  it  means  a  great  deal.  The  failure  to 
add  to  the  praises  of  cheap  goods  leaves  that  laud  of  cheapness  a  most  dan- 
gerous illusion.  Of  what  avail  is  it  to  have  a  loaf  of  brea'd  sold  for  a  penny, 
if  for  every  chance  to  earn  a  penny  there  are  a  dozen  hungry  men  elbowing 
their  way  to  the  chance  of  earning  that  penny  ;  thrown  out  of  work  by  the 
processes  which  have  thus  cheapened  bread,  and  left  them  with  no  point  of 
ground  on  the  earth  from  which  they  can  gain  their  own  living. 

f  "  In  the  matter  of  taxation,  there  are  to-day  four  men,  representing  the 
four  great  trunk  lines  between  Chicago  and  New  York,  who  possess,  and 
who  not  unfrequently  exercise,  powers  which  the  Congress  of  the  United 
States  would  not  venture  to  exert.  They  may  at  any  time,  and  for  any  rea- 
son satisfactory  to  themselves,  by  a  single  stroke  of  the  pen,  reduce  the  value 
of  property  in  this  country  by  hundreds  of  millions  of  dollars.  An  additional 
charge  of  five  cents  per  bushel  on  the  transportation  of  cereals  would  have 


34^  DANGERS  FROM  CORPORATIONS. 

trade,*  the  demoralizing  influence  which  they  are  exerting  upon 
legislation,  f  the  utter  indifference  which  they  display  to  the 

been  equivalent  to  a  tax  of  $45,00x3,000  on  the  crop  of  1873.  No  Congress 
would  dare  to  exercise  so  vast  a  power  except  upon  a  necessity  of  the  most 
imperative  nature  ;  and  yet  these  gentlemen  exercise  it  whenever  it  suits 
their  supreme  will  and  pleasure,  without  explanation  or  apology.  With  the 
rapid  and  inevitable  progress  of  consolidation  and  combination,  these  colos- 
sal organizations  are  daily  becoming  stronger  and  more  imperious.  The 
time  is  not  distant,  if  it  has  not  already  arrived,  when  it  will  be  the  duty  of 
the  statesman  to  inquire  whether  there  is  less  danger  in  leaving  the  property 
and  industrial  interests  of  the  people  thus  wholly  at  the  mercy  of  a  few  men 
who  recognize  no  responsibility  but  to  their  stockholders,  and  no  principle 
of  action  but  personal  and  corporate  aggrandizement,  than  in  adding  some- 
what to  the  power  and  patronage  of  a  government  directly  responsible  to  the 
people  and  entirely  under  their  control." — Report  of  United  States  Senate 
Committee  on  Transportation  Routes  (1874). 

*  "  The  railroads  of  the  State  of  New  York  annually  collect  for  transpor- 
tation nearly  one  hundred  millions  of  dollars,  or  a  sum  more  than  twelve 
times  as  large  as  the  entire  revenues  of  the  State  derived  from  taxation. 
Those  who  have  given  the  subject  much  attention  estimate  that  fifty  millions 
would  defray  the  expenses  of  operating  these  modern  highways  on  an  honest 
basis,  and  yield  ten  per  cent,  upon  the  amount  of  capital  actually  paid  in  by 
stock  and  bondholders.  This  leaves  an  actual  tax  of  from  forty  to  fifty 
millions  of  dollars  upon  the  industries  of  the  State,  a  taxation  so  enormous 
that  in  any  other  form  it  would  be  considered  absurd  and  impossible. " — 
"  The  Causes  of  Communism." 

\  "  I  do  not  know  how  much  I  paid  toward  helping  friendly  men.  We 
had  four  States  to  look  after,  and  we  had  to  suit  our  politics  to  circum- 
stances. In  a  Democratic  district,  I  was  a  Democrat ;  in  a  Republican  dis- 
trict, I  was  a  Republican  ;  and  in  a  doubtful  district,  I  was  doubtful,  but 
in  every  district  and  at  all  times  I  have  always  been  an  Erie  man." — Jay 
Gould,  before  Committee  of  New  York  Legislature  (1872). 

"  The  sudden  revolution  in  the  direction  of  this  company  (Erie)  has  laid 
bare  a  chapter  in  the  secret  history  of  railroad  management,  such  as  has 
not  been  permitted  before.  It  exposes  the  reckless  and  prodigal  use  of 
money  wrung  from  the  people  to~purchase  the  election  of  the  people's  repre- 
sentatives, and  to  bribe  them  when  in  office." — Report  of  above  Committee. 


STA  TE   CONTROL    OF  RAILROADS.  347 

public  interests,  *  the  unscrupulous  tyranny  which  they  use  in 
pushing  their  selfish  schemes  at  the  cost  of  the  people,  f  are 
creating  a  sentiment  which  will  erelong  compel  governmental 
supervision. 

Governmental  control  passes  easily  into  governmental  own- 
ership. For  its  own  dignity  and  independence,  its  own  security 
and  perpetuity,  as  well  as  for  the  good  of  the  people,  the  State 
is  thus  being  drawn  into  the  discharge  of  one  function  after 
another  of  the  corporate  life.  The  State  has  already  assumed 
the  supervision  of  the  railroad  system  in  England,  through  a 
commission  with  judicial  powers  ;  and  has  taken  the  first  steps 
in  this  direction  in  our  country,  in  the  appointment  of  the 
Massachusetts  Commission,  and  in  the  agitation  for  a  National 
Commission.  It  directs  the  general  management  of  the  rail- 
roads, and  actually  owns  them  in  part  or  in  whole  in  Germany, 
France,  Italy  and  Russia.  Belgium  owns  her  whole  system  of 
railways,  and  ensures  a  cheap,  safe  and  generally  satisfactory 
management.  The  State  has  now  under  advisement  the  question 
of  buying  and  operating  the  telegraph  system  in  this  country, 
and  has  made  this  advance  in  England,  with  a  great  cheapening 
of  rates.  It  is  developing  the  role  of  the  people's  banker,  not 
only  in  its  traditional  issue  of  currency,  but  in  its  guaranteeing 

*  "  The  city  of  New  York  sees  that  if  it  could  have  the  business  done  at 
a  rate  which  would  allow  Mr.  Vanderbilt  eight  per  cent,  on  the  actual  cap- 
ital invested  in  the  railroad,  on  the  actual  cost  of  the  property,  it  could  have 
its  business  done  at  one  half  the  present  rate  of  transportation  ;  and  it 
would  have  twice  the  amount  of  business,  and  there  would  be  no  empty 
houses  and  no  unemployed  laborers  in  the  city." — Hon.  Abram  S.  Hewitt, 
Investigation  by  a  Select  Committee  of  the  House  of  Representatives  Rel- 
ative to  the  Causes  of  the  General  Depression  in  Labor  and  Business  (1879); 
p.  214,  Mis.  Doc.  No.  29,  45th  Congress,  3d  Session. 

f  Cf.  "The  Story  of  a  Great  Monopoly,"  Atlantic  Monthly,  March, 
1881. 


GROWTH  OF  A    COMMONWEALTH. 

of  local  currency,  as  in  our  National  Bank  Act,  in  its  institu- 
tion of  postal  money  orders,  in  its  opening  of  governmental 
savings-banks  connected  with  the  postal  system,  as  in  England, 
in  its  putting  forth  among  ourselves  bonds  of  ten  dollars  for 
the  investment  of  the  poor,  and  in  its  supervision  of  savings- 
banks  by  the  States.  These  are  signs  of  a  widespread  move- 
ment. If,  as  Mr.  Charles  Francis  Adams,  Jr.,  says,  we  can 
expect  the  railroads  and  other  corporations  subserving  com- 
mon needs  to  be  run  in  the  interests  of  the  public  only  by 
making  the  State  own  them,  then  to  this  ownership  the  State 
must  sooner  or  later  come.*  The  steady  growth  of  the  organic 
life  is  asserting  itself  in  the  spreading  conviction  that  private 
interest  cannot  be  allowed  to  stand  in  the  way  of  the  public 
interest,  and  that  all  rights  must  be  held  in  trust  for  the  com- 
mon wealth.  Society  is  increasingly  asserting  the  interests  of 
the  many  against  the  interests  of  the  few,  of  the  people  against 
classes,  of  the  public  against  individuals,  and  thus  is  unavoid- 
ably building  up  a  common  property,  as  the  material  housing 
of  such  a  community. 

This  process  is  going  on  all  around  us,  in  the  face  of  the 
minimizing  of  government  inculcated  by  the  scribes  of  political 
economy,  and  without  any  violent  artificial  intervention  by  the 
apostles  of  Socialism,  solely  by  the  action  of  natural  forces  too 
strong  to  be  resisted.  Thus,  "  Wisdom  is  justified  of  all  her 
children  "  ;  and  the  ridiculed  prophets  of  the  ethical  order 

*  "I  maintain  that  the  thing  that  makes  the  New  York  Central  carry 
freight  at  half  a  mill  a  ton  per  mile  is  the  fact  that  whatever  the  company 
gets  in  the  development  of  its  business  belongs  to  its  stockholders.  If  you 
are  going  to  upset  all  this  and  do  business  not  for  gain,  but  out  of  public 
spirit,  depend  upon  it,  you  must  go  a  great  way  further,  and  make  the  State 
the  owner  of  the  railroad." — CHARLES  FRANCIS  ADAMS,  JR.,  before  the 
Hewitt  Congressional  Committee  on  Labor,  p.  213. 


ECONOMISTS  ON   THE  SOCIAL   EVOLUTION,       349 

behold  economic  and  social  laws  working  out  their  vision  of 
the  co-operative  State.* 

It  is  in  this  way,  and  this  alone,  that  a  sane  Socialism  expects 
to  realize  slowly  its  long-cherished  dream.  The  co-operative 
State  is  to  be  the  flower  of  the  process  of  integration  now 
going  on  in  society  ;  the  government's  necessitated  co-ordina- 
tion of  the  associative  action  developed  voluntarily  among  the 
people  on  an  increasingly  large  scale  ;  the  ultimate  generaliza- 
tion from  co-operative  trade  and  industrial  organizations,  the 
body  of  public  property  built  around  the  spirit  of  "  The  Com- 
mons," the  Republic  of  the  Commonwealth. 

XV. 

Orthodox  economy  is  at  one  with  heterodoxy  as  to  the  fact 
of  this  on-going  social  evolution,  and  as  to  the  general  form  of 
society  in  the  future.  Sober  students  look  forward  to  the 
time  when  co-operation  shall  have  completely  revolutionized 
our  industrial  system  and  reconstructed  society.  Mr.  Thorn- 
ton writes  : 

Regarding  the  subject  as  soberly  as  I  can,  it  seems  to  me  impossible 
that  the  day  should  not  arrive  when  almost  all  productive  industry,  and  most 
of  all  other  industry,  will  be,  in  one  sense  or  other,  co-operative  ;  when  the 
bulk  of  the  employed  will  be  their  own  employers,  and  when,  of  the  portion 
who  have  other  employers,  most  will  be  the  participators  in  those  employers' 
profits,  f 

Mr.  Mill  writes  : 

In  the  co-operative  movement,  the  permanency  of  which  may  now  be 
considered  as  insured,  we  see  exemplified  the  process  of  bringing  about  a 

*  Mr.  Mill  characterizes  the  Socialists  as  having  "  moral  conceptions  in 
many  respects  far  ahead  of  the  existing  arrangements  of  society." — "Prin- 
ciples of  Political  Economy,"  book  iv.,  ch.  vii.,  sec.  7. 

f  "  On  Labor,"  W.  T.  Thornton,  book  iv. ,  ch.  iii. 


35°  THE    CO-OPERATIVE   STATE. 

• 

change  in  society  which  would  combine  the  freedom  and  independence  of 
the  individual  with  the  moral,  intellectual,  and  economical  advantages  of 
aggregate  production  ;  and  which,  without  violence  or  spoliation,  or  even 
any  sudden  disturbance  of  existing  habits  and  expectations,  would  realize,  at 
least  in  the  industrial  department,  the  best  aspirations  of  the  democratic 
spirit,  by  putting  an  end  to  the  division  of  society  into  the  industrious  and 
the  idle,  and  effacing  all  social  distinctions  but  those  fairly  earned  by  per- 
sonal services  and  exertions.  ...  As  associations  multiplied,  they 
would  tend  more  and  more  to  absorb  all  work-people,  except  those  who 
have  too  little  understanding  or  too  little  virtue  to  be  capable  of  learning 
to  act  on  any  other  system  than  that  of  narrow  selfishness.  As  this  change 
proceeded,  owners  of  capital  would  gradually  find  it  to  their  advantage, 
instead  of  maintaining  the  struggle  of  the  old  system  with  work-people  of 
only  the  worst  description,  to  lend  their  capital  to  the  associations  ;  to  do 
this  at  a  diminishing  rate  of  interest,  and  at  last,  perhaps,  even  to  ex- 
change their  capital  for  terminable  annuities.  In  this,  or  some  such  mode, 
the  existing  accumulations  of  capital  might  honestly,  and  by  a  kind  of 
spontaneous  process,  become  in  the  end  the  joint  property  of  all  who  par- 
ticipate in  their  productive  employment,  a  transformation  which,  thus 
effected  (and  assuming,  of  course,  that  both  sexes  participate  equally  in 
the  rights  and  in  the  government  of  the  association)  would  be  the  nearest 
approach  to  social  justice,  and  the  most  beneficial  ordering  of  industrial 
affairs  for  the  universal  good,  which  it  is  possible  at  present  to  foresee.  * 

Orthodox  economy  remains,  however,  incredulous  of  the 
dream  of  "  The  Co-operative  State."  Nevertheless,  that 
dream  was,  in  the  brain  of  the  wisest  of  philosophers,  the  pro- 
foundest  of  social  and  political  students,  "  the  Bible  of  the 
learned  for  twenty-two  hundred  years."  f  Plato  saw  this 
vision  centuries  ago,  and  we  have  its  mirrorings  in  "  The 
Republic  " — that  sublime  ideal  of  a  real  government  of  a  free 
people.  The  Republic  needs  must  be  a  Communism,  inasmuch 
as  its  synonyme,  in  the  true  titling  of  Plato,  is  "  concerning 
justice."  This  same  dream  has  cheered  the  souls  of  earth's 

*  "  Principles  of  Political-Economy,"  book  iv.,  ch.  vii.,  g  6. 
f  Emerson's  Essay  on  Plato. 


HOW   THE  NEW  ORDER   COMETH.  351 

noblest  thinkers  through  all  the  dark  days  since  the  great  Greek  ; 
whenever,  turning  away  from  the  shadows  lying  heavily  upon 
the  world,  they  have  caught  sight  of  the  City  of  God  coming 
down  from  heaven — Utopia,  Nowhere  yet  on  earth  in  outward 
form,  but  in  spirit  so  long  seen  and  striven  for  that  a  re-arrange- 
ment of  the  old  elements  may  some  time  make  it  Now-here. 

This  dream  may  indeed  prove  a  nightmare  to  disordered 
societies,  and  may  shape  itself  in  convulsions.  Anarchic  action 
there  will  be  in  this  natural  evolution  of  the  social  world,  as 
there  has  been  in  the  natural  evolution  of  the  physical  world 
— the  violent  effort  of  repressed  forces  to  burst  the  hard  crust 
of  the  old  order,  even  as  we  see  to-day  in  Europe.  Karl 
Marx  says  :  "  Force  is  the  accoucheur  of  every  old  society 
which  is  pregnant  with  a  new  one."  That  is  true  only  in  so 
far  as  civilization  has  made  parturition  an  unnatural  process, 
difficult,  painful  and  dangerous,  necessitating  often  surgical 
obstetrics,  and  sometimes  even  the  Caesarian  operation  of  Le 
Terreur  and  Nihilism.  Freedom  renders  even  the  travail 
throes  natural,  and  therefore  easy  and  safe,  and  there  is  only 
"  joy  that  a  man  is  born  into  the  world."  And  freedom  is  the 
political  health  into  which  mankind  is  being  led  for  this  social 
birth  from  above  of  the  man  gotten  from  the  Lord.  Revolu- 
tions will  prove  to  be  but  cataclysms  in  the  action  of  an  evo- 
lution. Breakers,  heavy  and  thunderous,  there  will  be  where  the 
incoming  tide  meets  the  wash  of  the  ebbing  current,  and  the 
cresting  wave  will  gather  high  and  threatening  against  the 
backward  suction  of  the  undertow  ;  but  over  the  bar  the  seeth- 
ing sea  will  spread  itself,  calm  and  smiling,  as,  drawn  by 
influences  from  above,  which  no  hold  of  earth  can  check,  the 
deep  ocean  swells  up  bays  and  rivers,  creeks  and  tiny  streams, 
sweeping  the  slimy  places  of  corruption  with  the  cleansing 
waters  of  a  larger  life,  and  spreading  over  every  dry  and  bar- 


352  FORM  OF   THE  NEW  ORDER. 

ren  waste  the  freshness  and  fertility  of  the  new  earth  wherein 
dwelleth  righteousness. 

The  old  order  changeth,  yielding  place  to  new, 

And  God  fulfils  himself  in  many  ways, 

Lest  one  good  custom  should  corrupt  the  world. 

XVI. 

What  the  form  of  the  new  order  shall  be,  who  dare  min- 
utely predict  ?  This,  however,  we  may  assuredly  know  :  "  that 
body  which  shall  be  "  will  prove  no  resurrection  of  the 
material  housing  which  has  been  once  and  forever  laid  aside. 
Nature  does  not  go  back  to  the  grave  to  pick  up  worn-out 
bodies.  Continuing  the  soul  which  in  its  infancy  shaped  the 
body  of  the  past,  it  fashions  round  it,  matured  and  developed, 
the  body  of  the  future  ;  a  loftier  likeness  of  the  old  in  the  new, 
a  transfigured  organization.  Every  organism  is  a  Communism, 
but  man  is  not  a  reproduction  of  the  oyster.  Civilization 
turned  once,  in  the  far-back  past,  away  from  the  Communism 
which  found  no  place  for  private  property,  and  gave  no  play 
to  Individualism.  To  revert  to  that  Communism  would  be  re- 
trogression not  progression,  the  return  to  childhood  in  senility 
— in  poverty  if  in  purity,  in  ignorance  if  in  innocence.  Not 
thus  is  man  to  become  a  little  child  that  he  may  enter  the 
kingdom  of  heaven. 

Ruskin  finely  says  : 

There  is  a  singular  sense  in  which  the  child  may  peculiarly  be  said  to 
be  father  of  the  man.  In  many  arts  and  attainments,  the  first  and  last 
stages  of  progress — the  infancy  and  the  consummation — have  many  feat- 
tures  in  common  ;  while  the  intermediate  stages  are  wholly  unlike  either 
and  are  furthest  from  the  right.  .  .  .  Childhood  often  holds  a  truth 
with  its  feeble  fingers  which  the  grasp  of  manhood  cannot  retain, — which 
it  is  the  pride  of  utmost  age  to  recover.* 

*  "  Modern  Painters,"  John  Ruskin,  Intro. 


CYCLIC  MOVEMENT  OF  SOCIETY.  353 

This  is  the  progress  of  the  race  :  the  action  of  that  law  of 
circularity  which,  urging  civilization  round  yet  also  up,  brings 
society  again  into  the  same  longitude  where  once  it  anchored 
ages  since,  but  now  in  a  far  higher  latitude  ;  its  symbol,  the 
spiral.  The  world  is  sweeping  round  into  the  meridian  of 
Communism,  but  it  will  prove  the  parallel  ofg*  nobler  "  ism  " 
of  common  property  than  that  of  the  past.  The  Communism 
of  the  future  will  not  do  away  with  private  property,  but  will 
restrain  it  to  healthful  proportions,  will  subordinate  its  aggre- 
gate to  the  mass  of  wealth  held  in  common,  and  will  guard 
against  its  renewed  dangerous  development  by  subsoiling  it 
with  a  deep,  wide,  firm  basis  of  common  property,  held  for  the 
people  by  co-operative  associations,  economic,  social  and  re- 
ligious, and  by  the  State.  In  that  commonage  will  probably 
be  included  all  properties  which  shall  prove  themselves,  in  the 
experience  of  mankind,  essential  to  the  commonwealth,  even, 
if  need  be,  up  to  the  collective  ownership  of  the  land,  the  in- 
struments of  production,  and  the  means  of  exchange.* 

Between  the  opposite  poles  of  individualism  and  association, 
in  oscillating  cycles,  civilization  gravitates  toward  the  poise  of 
the  pendulum,  the  golden  mean  of  an  institution  of  property 
in  which  all  needful  severalties  of  personal  possession  shall 
form  freely  within  the  ensphering  body  of  a  vast  and  noble 
Communism.  The  distant  goal  of  this  troublous  age  is  once 
more  a  stationary  period,  f  '  In  the  far-back  past,  the  calm  of 
the  mountain  lake,  placid  and  pure  as  the  snow-fields  around 

*  "  There  must  be  for  human  affairs  an  order  which  is  the  best.  This 
order  is  by  no  means  always  the  existing  one  ;  else  why  should  we  all  de- 
sire change  in  the  latter  ?  But  it  is  the  order  which  ought  to  exist  for  the 
greatest  happiness  of  the  human  race.  God  knows  it,  and  desires  its  adop- 
tion. It  is  for  man  to  discover  and  establish  it." — "  Primitive  Property," 
E.  de  Laveleye  (concluding  paragraph). 

f  "  Principles  of  Political  Economy,  J.  S.  Mill,  book  iv.,  ch.  vi. 


354  A    PARABLE   OF  PROGRESS. 

it ;  then  the  wild  whirl  of  the  mountain  stream,  delightedly 
escaping  from  stagnation,  hurrying  away  from  the  old  and 
tranquil  haunts,  reckless  of  where  and  how,  so  only  that,  obe- 
dient to  the  resistless  yearning  which  stirs  within  its  bosom, 
there  is  motion  on  ;  plunging  wildly  in  tumultuous  freedom, 
here  in  the  ga^  sunlight,  there  in  the  gloomy  gorges,  hurling 
over  huge  precipices  in  untried  ventures,  shaking  into  thin 
mist,  splintering  on  craggy  rocks,  grinding  into  white  foam  in 
the  seething  whirlpool,  but  ever  hasting  on  ;  freshening  the 
air  for  the  dwellers  in  the  valleys  down  which  it  scampers, 
greening  the  grass  and  goldening  the  grain  and  kissing  the 
flowers  with  its  dewy  breath  till  they  blush  into  iris  hued  rip- 
plings  of  delight ;  anon  bursting  its  embankments,  pouring  over 
the  fields  of  patient  industry,  deluging,  devastating,  destroying  ; 
spreading  at  length  into  the  smooth-flowing  river,  which  moves 
onward  still,  through  mighty  continents  of  being  ;  bearing  the 
burdens  of  the  peoples  of  the  earth,  exchanging  their  produc- 
tions, building  up  fair  cities  and  crowding  them  with  wealth, 
causing  the  desert  to  blossom  as  the  rose  ;  yet  clogging  here 
and  there  into  slimy  shallows  and  turbid  marshes,  where  the 
poison  gathered  from  the  heedless  life  along  its  shores  washes 
upon  the  ground  and  exhales  into  the  air,  and  makes  the  great 
river,  on  which  weary  men  must  toil  and  from  which  thirsting 
men  must  drink,  a  deadly  curse,  blighting  the  regions  round 
into  a  land  of  the  shadow  of  death  ;  at  last  flowing  into  the 
broad  sea,  where  all  streams  mingle  and  are  one,  where  all  evil 
elements  are  purified  and  precipitated,  and  clean  and  whole- 
some the  great  deep  hushes  into  the  calm  of  the  Pacific,  whose 
waters  stir  only  with  the  long,  low  ground-swell  and  the  gentle, 
steady  trade-winds,  while  they  flash  beneath  the  bright  beams 
of  an  eternal  summer,  and.  pulse  with  the  movements  of  all 
varied  and  beautiful  life  round  the  happy  islands  where  man 


A    VISION  OF    VICTORY.  355 

is  once  more  a  child  in  the  garden  of  the  Lord,  the  garden 
wherein  stands  the  tree  of  life,  yielding  its  fruit  every  month  ; 
and  the  leaves  of  the  tree  are  for  the  healing  of  the  nations  ; 
and  there  shall  be  no  more  curse. 

From  the  mountain-tops,  we  may  see  the  light  of  the  dawn- 
ing day  on  that  far-off  sea  of  peace,  and  cry,  with  Saint-Simon 
in  his  parting  breath,  "  The  future  is  ours." 


NOTES. 


NOTE  I. 


CONVERSATION    FOLLOWING    THE    TESTIMONY    BEFORE    THE    SENATE    COM- 
MITTEE  ON   EDUCATION  AND   LABOR. 

By  Mr.  CALL  : 

Q.  I  should  like  to  ask  you  a  question  or  two  for  my  own  information. 
You  say  that  you  think  the  mineral  lands  should  be  reserved  for  the  use  of 
the  government — for  the  use  of  the  public, — that  they  should  not  be  sold  in 
fee  simple  nor  absolutely  parted  with,  but  might  be  leased  or  otherwise 
worked.  In  what  respect  would  you  distinguish  the  difference  to  the  gov- 
ernment or  people  between  giving  a  lease  interest  in  mineral  lands,  and 
selling  them  entirely  ? 

A.  If  you  will  compare  the  present  manner  of  opening  our  mineral 
resources  and  of  using  them  with  what  might  be  our  action,  the  answer  will 
be  easily  indicated.  At  present  private  parties,  individuals,  or  corporations 
prospect  for  new  mines  ;  and  when  locating  them  proceed  to  open  them, 
and  use  the  treasures  of  nature's  storing  primarily  for  private  emolument. 
Of  course  the  people  at  large  get  a  measure  of  good  out  of  these  resources — 
no  thanks  to  our  monopolizing  friends,  who  find  that  they  cannot  make 
their  Dives'  feast  without  letting  fall  the  crumbs  for  Lazarus.  But  the 
people  have  to  pay  vastly  more  for  what  they  get  than  they  should.  Pri- 
vate owners  put  all  the  price  on  these  supplies  that  they  think  they  will 
bear.  They  thus,  in  getting  control  of  mines,  get  control  of  a  power  of 
taxing  the  people.  We  allow  nature's  treasures,  which  no  man  creates,  to 
become  the  feeder,  not  of  the  general  comfort,  but  of  the  wealth  and  luxury 
of  the  few. 

Now,  think  of  what  might  be.  Suppose  that  it  was  declared  by  law  that 
all  mineral  resources  hereafter  to  be  discovered  were  to  be  held  by  the 
national  government,  or  by  the  State  governments,  as  the  property  of  the 
people,  and  administered  for  the  benefit  of  the  whole  body  of  citizens.  The 
mode  of  administering  determined  on  might  be  direct  governmental  manage- 
ment, in  which  all  the  profits,  if  the  business  was  honestly  carried  on,  would 
go  to  the  public.  It  might  also  be  the  letting  out  of  the  privileges  for  a 
given  number  of  years,  subject  to  such  conditions  as  should  be  imposed  in 
the  contract.  Those  conditions  could  secure  for  the  people  at  large  that  the 
profits  to  be  made  out  of  the  mining  by  the  lessees  should  not  be  above  a 
certain  per  centum  of  the  capital  engaged.  The  public  would  be  secured 
against  extortionate  prices,  and  these  prices  would  drag  down  the  prices  of 

359 


360  THE    STATE  AND    THE  MINES. 

private  mining  companies  to  a  fair  level.  Thus,  the  people  would  be  re- 
lieved of  the  present  incubus  of  taxation  imposed  by  the  private  ownership 
of  mineral  resources,  and  every  man's  income  would  go  very  much  farther 
in  purchasing  coal,  etc.  At  the  same  time  the  government,  State  or  National, 
would  be  drawing  a  large  revenue  for  public  purposes  form  the  rental  of  these 
mines.  So  that  there  would  be  a  gain  to  the  people  at  both  ends  of  the  line. 
Then,  when  the  leases  ran  out,  a  new  appraisal  would  be  made,  inuring 
(where  there  was  an  increase  of  value  in  the  property)  to  the  people  in  the 
person  of  the  State.  Thus  the  running  on  of  any  arrangement  by  which  the 
people  suffered  would  be  prevented.  With  the  increasing  development  of 
the  mineral  resources  of  the  land,  the  commonwealth  would  be  steadily  en- 
riching, and  a  vast  possession  be  accumulating  in  the  hands  of  the  people, 
to  be  used  for  no  speculative  purposes  injurious  to  the  community,  and  for 
no  oppressive  taxation  of  the  people,  but  for  the  varied  constructive  tasks 
of  the  State,  public  works,  education,  etc. 


There  is  a  deeper  ground  of  interest  to  me  in  the  plan  of  the  State's 
owning  and  leasing  the  future  mines.  It  would  be  the  recognition  of 
a  principle  'which  has  far  wider  application — the  introduction  of  the  thin 
edge  of  a  very  big  wedge,  the  driving  in  of  which  would,  later  on,  break  up 
the  present  uncontrolled  individualism  in  the  ownership  of  land,  and  open 
the  way  to  the  State's  control  of  it  for  the  people. 

********* 

By  the  CHAIRMAN  : 

Q.  I  want  to  ask  a  question  or  two  in  another  direction,  not  with  the 
idea  of  controverting  any  of  the  positions  you  have  taken,  but  to  draw  out 
your  views  somewhat  in  another  direction.  I  gather  from  what  you  say  that 
you  consider  the  real  difficulty  one  of  distribution  of  the  joint  product  of 
labor,  capital,  and  land  than  otherwise? — A.  I  do. 

Q.  That,  in  other  words,  the  stronger  force  gets  a  larger  proportion  than 
justly  belongs  to  it,  or  than  does  the  weaker  force  ? — A.  Yes. 

Q.  You  think  that  labor  does  not  get  its  fair  share.  I  suppose,  then,  the 
more  wealth  there  is  created  the  better,  because  there  would  be  more  to 
divide  ? — Undoubtedly. 

Q.  Do  you  believe  the  proposition,  somewhat  generally  received,  I  sup- 
pose, that  production  ordinarily  can  be  more  stimulated  under  private  than 
under  public  management  ? — A.  Speaking  generally,  I  do.  I  believe  that 
has  been  the  function  of  individualism  in  the  development  of  civilization. 
Perhaps  another  force  than  individualism  is  necessary  for  rightful  distri- 
bution. 

Q.  Then,  if  the  proper  distribution  could  be  effected,  you  think  it  would 
be  better  that  this  combination  of  the  factors  of  production  should  remain 
under  private  management  rather  than  be  consigned  to  public  management? 
— A.  Yes,  if  that  could  be  secured,  except  in  so  far  as  there  are  works 
which  from  their  nature  the  State  is  better  fitted  to  do. 


BAD  DISTRIBUTION  OF    WEALTH.  361 

• 

Q.  In  other  words,  you  believe  that  the  individual  in  society  is  more 
capable  of  successful  administration  or  working  of  these  great  factors  of 
production  than  the  mass,  the  government  at  large  ? — A.  On  the  whole,  yes. 

Q.  So  it  would  follow  from  these  premises  that  if  the  abuses,  whatever 
they  are,  that  have  caused  it,  now  existing  in  society,  could  be  remedied, 
you  would  be  satisfied  with  the  existing  order  of  things  so  far  as  titles  and 
the  general  administration  of  social  and  business  life  are  concerned  1 — A. 
Yes,  with  that  very  big  "  If." 

Q.  Then,  all  that  conceded,  I  want  to  ask  you  to  specify  such  particular 
direction  or  particular  ways  in  which  there  is  waste  or  improper  appropria- 
tion of  the  result  of  production.  Certain  parties  get  too  much  ;  others  do 
not  get  enough.  Specify  a  few  of  the  directions  in  which  you  think  the 
greatest  waste  or  misappropriation  against  justice  occurs. 

A.  Capital,  as  a  rule,  gets  a  disproportionate  share  of  production.  Fig- 
ures, I  know,  are  so  handled  by  skilful  statisticians  as  to  becloud  this  fact  ; 
but  fact  I  believe  it  is.  The  whole  mass  of  labor  in  a  factory,  say  five  huh- 
dred  hands,  is  balanced  against  the  one  capitalist,  and  then  it  is  said  that 
"labor  gets  the  lion's  share."  It  is  enough  to  look  at  the  wealth  so  fre- 
quently accumulated  in  manufacturing,  and  to  look  then  at  the  general  con- 
dition of  factory  labor,  to  see  through  all  sophisms  on  this  point.  Here  is 
a  great  waste  or  misappropriation,  speaking  from  the  standpoint  of  society. 
It  would  be  juster  and  better  to  have  our  capitalists  less  wealthy,  and  their 
laborers  more  comfortable,  better  educated,  and  better  housed.  Plainly, 
society's  need  is  of  the  many  getting  more  and  the  few  less  out  of  produc- 
tion. It  is  this  fact  which  lends  force  to  the  Socialist  doctrine,  that  if,  say, 
four  hours'  work  represents  the  productivity  for  which  a  man  is  paid  in  the 
wages  he  receives,  the  other  six  hours  represent  his  labor  appropriated  to 
its  own  benefit  by  capital. 

Then  there  is  misdirection  of  the  results  of  labor  in  the  huge  accumula- 
tions of  middlemen,  traders,  merchants,  carriers,  etc.  They  serve  an 
equally  important  function  with  those  who  toil  for  production  proper,  but 
they  get  a  share  of  reward  wholly  disproportionate.  Thus  it  is  that  great  for- 
tunes are  built  up  most  readily  by  the  men  who  simply  exchange  what 
others  have  produced.  And  in  securing  these  great  rewards,  prices  are  run 
up  high,  so  that  while  the  producer  gets  but  a  small  part  of  the  value  of  his 
labor,  when  he  needs  to  buy  back  that  work,  or  some  other  branch  of 
labor's  work,  he  has  to  pay  several  times  the  value  it  had  as  a  piece  of  pro- 
duction. Where  are  the  colossal  fortunes  made  ?  Not  in  producing,  but 
in  exchanging,  including  in  this  term,  of  course,  carriage.  So  in  other  di- 
rections, through  which  it  would  take  time  to  track  the  absorption  into 
other  than  labor's  hands  of  the  value  of  labor's  own  production. 

Q.  You  have  mentioned  the  accumulation  of  very  large  fortunes  in  the 
hands  of  individual  men. — A.  As  drawn  to  do  so  by  direct  questioning  ; 
otherwise  I  have  not  emphasized,  I  believe,  that  phase  of  the  subject,  for> 
more  than  one  reason.  These  gigantic  fortunes  arrest  attention,  and  so 
start  questions  and  rouse  antagonism.  They  serve  to  objectify  a  social 
tendency  and  to  throw  it  into  a  strong  and  bad  light.  That  tendency  is 


362       GREAT  FORTUNES    VS.    GENERAL    COMFORT. 

• 

unwholesome,  unsound,  dangerous,  especially  in  a  republic  ;  so  we  are 
likely  to  hear  quite  enough  about  "  the  coming  billionnaire. "  But  there  is 
danger  of  overdoing  the  personal  opposition  and  of  concentrating  upon  a 
few  men,  perhaps  personally  by  no  means  monsters,  the  indignation 
which  ought  to  spread  itself  upon  the  wrongful  social  tendency.  While 
the  roots  are  in  the  ground  it  is  of  little  use  to  mow  down  one  crop 
of  weeds. 

Q.  But,  generally,  take  the  fortunes  of  $200,000,000  that  we  read  about  in 
particular  individuals.  Do  you  think  that  these  fortunes,  as  a  whole,  are 
better  administered  than  they  would  be  if  they  were  vested  in  the  govern- 
ment at  large  ;  or,  in  other  words,  does  it  not  follow,  from  the  premises  we 
have  assumed,  that  Astor,  Gould,  Sage,  Vanderbilt,  Huntington,  and  others, 
administer  their  large  fortunes  better  than  they  would  be  administered  in 
other  hands  ? — A.  Solely  as  a  matter  of  production,  possibly — probably, 
yes.  Most  of  these  men  are  admitted  to  have  talents  of  an  uncommon 
older.  Commodore  Vanderbilt  was  certainly  a  rare  genius  in  organization, 
and  Mr.  Gould  is  often  called  a  Napoleon  of  speculation.  Less  gifted  men 
could  not,  perhaps,  develop  such  enterprises  as  these  men  have  done.  But 
even  then  there  are  qualifications  to  come  in.  Perhaps  no  one  man  could 
as  well  manage  Commodore  Vanderbilt's  lines  as  he  did.  But  a  large  and 
well-organized  system  of  officering  can  possibly  do  it  as  well.  The  Penn- 
sylvania Railroad  to-day  is  a  splendid  specimen  of  corporate  capacity,  with 
no  one  such  man  at  its  head.  We  are  increasingly  being  driven  into  the 
peculiar  power  of  administration  that  lies  in  well-organized  companies. 
This  is  the  new  tendency  already  making  itself  felt  over  the  older  force  of 
pure  individualism. 

Then,  moreover,  it  is  open  to  ask  how  well  for  public  good  most  of  these 
gigantic  private  fortunes  are  administered  ?  They  seek  investments  solely 
with  reference  to  dividends,  and  with  an  almost  sublime  indifference  to 
every  consideration  of  what  the  people  most  need.  A  host  of  urgent  im- 
provements may  be  waiting  to  be  carried  out  right  at  their  doors  ;  are  so 
waiting,  with  every  promise  of  fair  returns  to  the  capital  invested.  But 
huge  fortunes  rarely  care  to  engage  in  such  enterprises.  They  are  filled 
with  schemes  of  vast  aggrandizement,  with  dreams  of  immense  combina- 
tions, giving  unheard-of  power.  They  tend  to  go  out  into  speculative  enter- 
prises ;  and  these  stimulate  the  country  unhealthfully  and  help  on  the  in- 
evitable reaction.  They  go  out  "wild-catting"  in  all  countries  of  the 
globe,  and  lend  kings  the  power  to  wage  war.  English  capital  has  sunk 
enough,  probably,  in  Egyptian  improvements,  after  Ismail's  heart,  in  float- 
ing Turkey,  and  in  all  sorts  of  out-of-the-way  and  generally  harmful 
schemes,  to  have  reconstructed  the  worst  defects  of  London,  while  drawing 
a  fair  return. 

But  the  question  of  administration  covers  that  of  distribution  as  well  as 
that  of  production.  And  there  can  be,  as  it  seems  to  me,  but  one  judgment 
as  to  the  influence  of  the  sort  of  expenditure  which  huge  fortunes  encour- 
age. It  is  bad.  It  gives  work"  as  the  same  thousands  would,  however 
spent  ;  but  it  gives  the  work  which  creates  little  or  nothing,  and  which  en- 


THE   PROBLEM  OF  DISTRIBUTION.  363 

feebles  and  degrades  the  workers.  It  builds  up  the  classes  which  minister 
to  luxury,  and  they  are  economically  unprofitable  classes  to  the  community, 
and  socially  are  undesirable  classes. 

It  is  not  a  question  between  A's  having  $20x5,000,000  and  the  State's 
having  it.  It  is  a  question  between  A's  having  it  and  all  the  rest  of  the 
alphabet  having  it.  If  the  State  ran  all  Mr.  Gould's  roads  it  would  be  the 
people  who  pocketed  the  dividends  in  one  way  or  another,  if  the  adminis- 
tration was  honest.  Men  say  A.  has  to  put  out  all  his  $200,000,000  in  invest- 
ments, except  the  few  thousands  he  can  spend  a  year.  True  ;  but  there  is 
a  great  difference  between  the  way  he  puts  out  $200,000,000  and  the  way 
2,000  people  would  each  put  out  $100,000  ;  as  between  the  way  he  spends 
what  he  can  of  his  vast  income,  and  the  way  they  would  spend  their  $6,000 
or  $5,ooo  apiece.  Here  is  the  root  of  the  matter.  Which  is  the  best  for 
the  country,  the  investments  and  personal  expenditure  of  one  man  with 
$200,000,000,  or  the  investments  and  personal  expenditures  of  2,000  men 
each  having  $100,000,  or  of  20,000  men  each  having  $10,000  ?  . 

Q.  We  have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  what  wealth  there  is. may  be 
better  administered  in  private  than  in  public  hands,  as  a  rule.  But,  on  the 
other  hand,  there  is  a  fault  in  distribution,  and  labor  suffers.  We  mutually 
believe  that.  The  real  thing  to  ascertain  is  just  what  portion  of  wealth  is 
misappropriated  and  might  be  otherwise  used. — A.  That  is  rather  a  difficult 
question  to  answer. 

Q.  But  there  is  a  difficulty,  and  it  results  from  the  premises  that  we  have 
assumed. — A.  Yes,  it  does. 

Q.  Is  it  not  like  this  ?  The  laborer,  as  you  have  pointed  out,  wastes  a 
great  deal  in  his  personal  habits  ;  a  portion  of  his  wages  is  put  to  very  poor 
use.  Then,  of  this  immense  mass  of  money  handled  by  the  capitalist, 
whether  invested  in  labor  or  otherwise,  a  great  deal  of  that  might  be  better 
distributed.  Now,  do  some  of  these  ways  occur  to  you  ?  To  put  the  idea  a 
little  more  distinctly,  are  we  not  drifting  toward  some  fundamental  proposi- 
tion like  this,  that  before  there  be  any  reinvestment  for  the  benefit  of  capi- 
tal in  any  form,  and  before  there  be  any  appropriation  of  the  product  of 
labor  and  capital  for  the  unnecessary  uses  of  any  individual  whatever — 
whether  the  laborer  or  the  capitalist, — there  must  be  first  deducted  from 
production  all  that  is  necessary  to  give  to  the  producer  the  necessaries  of 
life  ? — A.  Certainly. 

Q.  If  that  is  true,  is  it  not  necessary  to  take  a  position  which,  as  far  as 
I  know,  has  not  yet  been  taken  or  insisted  upon  before  us — this  primary 
position,  that  there  should  be  deducted  from  the  price  realized  from  produc- 
tion a  greater  sum  than  is  now  taken  and  appropriated  to  the  wage 
laborer  ? — A.  I  believe  that,  thoroughly. 

Q.  Now,  how  can  that  thing  be  done  ?  There  is  no  law  for  it.  The  law 
of  supply  and  demand  does  not  provide  for  it ;  the  co-operative  system  does 
not  provide  for  it,  though  perhaps  it  does  so  better  than  any  thing  else — 
but  under  the  existing  laws  of  the  land  there  is  no  provision  for  giving  labor 
any  thing  more  of  price  than  what  it  can  demand  under  the  laws  of 
supply  and  demand  in  the  market.  Is  it  necessary,  then,  that  there 


364  LEGISLATION    VS.    EDUCATION. 

should  be  introduced  into  the  laws  of  the  country  a  proposition  by 
virtue  of  the  legal  establishment  of  which  labor  should  have  a  larger  pro- 
portion in  some  way  out  of  the  price  realized  from  production  from  time  to 
time  ? 

A.  I  do  not  see  how  it  is  possible  for  legislation  to  effect  such  an  end — at 
/east  not  in  the  beginning  of  an  effort  for  it.  Legislation  that  was  not 
backed  by  public  sentiment  would  be  inoperative.  And  if  we  have  the 
public  sentiment  we  can  secure  the  end,  perhaps,  without  any  legislation. 
At  all  events  we  should  try  for  the  creation  of  such  a  public  sentiment  be- 
fore we  try  legislation.  If  legislation  is  needful  it  will  soon  be  had  then. 
We  have  given  up  the  endeavor  to  regulate  prices  and  wages  by  law, 
for  good  reasons.  Law  is  too  clumsy  and  unelastic  a  mechanism  to 
adjust  itself  to  the  rapid  fluctuations  of  the  market.  It  seems  to  me 
that  on  such  a  point  the  teachings  of  our  political  economists  are  thoroughly 
sound.  Here  is  the  very  case  in  which  their  theory  of  non-interference  is 
right.  Almost  every  other  feature  of  the  world  of  trade  can  be  better  inter- 
fered with  than  prices  and  wages.  There  is  a  simpler  way. 

The  conscience  of  the  community  is  uneducated  on  this  point.  Few 
suspect  that  there  is  any  unwisdom  or  wrong  in  our  present  system 
of  providing  first  for  the  luxury  of  the  few  and  only  after  that  for  the 
needs  of  the  many.  What  is,  is  right  to  the  mass  of  men.  The  natural 
law  of  demand  and  supply  does  not  necessarily  exclude  the  action  of  moral 
forces.  Immoral  forces — greed  and  selfishness — weight  these  laws  in 
one  direction  now.  The  sense  of  justice,  the  spirit  of  brotherliness,  can 
weight  these  laws  in  the  other  direction,  without  external  action.  Put  back 
of  our  manufacturers  a  larger  development  of  conscience,  of  conscience 
educated  to  discern  the  real  ethics  of  the  case,  and  the  problem  would  soon 
be  solved. 

Q.  Can  you  do  that  ? 

A.  I  believe  it  can  be  done.  There  are  vast  resources  of  moral  energy 
among  our  people  to  be  drawn  upon  for  such  action.  The  sense  of  justice 
is  one  of  the  strongest  powers  in  man. 

I  have  had  a  chance  of  seeing  a  good  deal  of  manufacturers.  Those  that 
I  know  well  I  know  to  be  men  of  kind  hearts  and  real  conscientiousness  ; 
who  sincerely  desire  to  do  what  is  right,  and  who  often  are  anxious,  deeply 
anxious,  to  add  to  justice,  as  they  see  it,  kindness.  It  is  folly  to  cry  down 
capitalists  as  a  class,  because  there  are  so  many  grasping,  hard-hearted  men 
among  them. 

But  conscience  needs  to  be  educated.  It  takes  its  tone  from  public 
sentiment,  and  looks  to  custom  for  its  standards.  And  society  calls  the 
present  division  right,  while  political  economists  check  any  rising  of 
dissatisfaction  with  it  by  hosts  of  reasons  why  it  always  was  and  ever  will 
be  as  it  is,  world  without  end  ;  calling  all  such  feelings  "  sentimentality." 
And  there  is  next  to  no  attempt  made  by  the  churches,  the  educators  of 
conscience,  to  enlighten  men  on  the  ethics  of  this  problem,  or  to  stir  their 
wills  to  larger  justice.  Churches  preach  charity,  not  justice.  One  genera- 
tion in  which  the  churches  seriously  grappled  with  this  task  would 


LEGISLATION    VS.   EDUCATION.  365 

answer  the  question  you  have  proposed  in  the  only  way  I  think  it  can  be 
really  answered. 

I  believe  it  could  be  shown  that  such  increase  of  wages  would  not  be 
wholly  the  loss  to  profits  that  men  suppose  it  would  be.  Better  pay  draws 
out  better  work.  Productivity  is  increased,  and  there  is  more  to  divide  ;  so 
that  while  the  capitalist  would  get  relatively  less,  he  might  get  absolutely 
nearly  as  much  as  before.  Henry  Carey,  who  brings  out  this  law,  rightly 
calls  it  "  the  most  beautiful  in  the  book  of  science." 

Q.  With  that  increasing  productivity,  is  there  not  an  increasing  want  or 
multiplication  of  wants,  so  that  with  advancing  civilization  the  wants  of  the 
common  laborer  may  in  time  become  what  the  wants  of  the  refined  and 
delicate  are  to-day  ? — A.  Yes. 

Q.  And  we  have  to  deal  with  the  things  of  to-day — what  is  luxury  to-day 
may  become  a  necessity  to-morrow.  So  would  you  find  any  remedy  in  that 
direction  ? — A.  If  we  are  satisfied  that  the  tendency  is  in  the  right  direction, 
let  us  act  for  our  own  generation.  The  next  generation  will  be  better  able  to 
deal  with  its  own  problems.  We  are  surely  moving  in  the  right  direction  when 
we  move  towards  creating  noble  wants — wants  such  as  grow  out  of  deeper 
and  richer  and  more  varied  life.  The  ideal  of  man  is  that  towards  which 
nature  is  moving,  and  as  we  place  in  men's  reach  the  means  of  enlarging 
and  enriching  their  beings,  we  are  moving  with  nature.  Doubtless  she  is 
secretly  a  good  deal  more  interested  in  the  development  of  a  town  full  of 
happy,  healthy,  intelligent,  and  virtuous  people,  than  in  the  development 
of  a  half-dozen  splendid  specimens  of  the  gentleman  and  lady.  We  must 
probably  diminish  the  supply  of  prize  specimens  of  man  in  order  to  improve 
the  general  stock.  Let  us  take  one  step  at  a  time. 

Q.  Then,  if  I  understand  you,  the  remedy  is,  after  all,  an  educational 
one,  partially,  as  applied  to  the  capitalist,  and  still  more  largely  as  applied 
to  the  laboring  classes  themselves  ? — A.  I  believe  the  solution  of  the  labor 
problem  is  to  be  chiefly  found  in  education  ;  education  of  both  factors  in 
the  problem — capital  and  labor — though  I  should  not  count  the  education 
of  one  less  important  than  that  of  the  other. 

Q.  Then,  if  there  is  no  legislation  that  can  be  of  any  use,  does  not  the 
remedy  lie  primarily  and  substantially  in  improving  the  schools  of  the 
country — the  public  schools,  the  industrial  schools,  the  normal  schools,  and 
higher  schools,  in  their  order — rather  than  in  other  directions  ? — A.  I  did 
not  say  that  I  thought  there  could  be  no  helpful  legislation  ;  there  are 
many  ways  in  which,  as  it  seems  to  me,  legislation  can  greatly  help  ;  some 
of  which  I  pointed  out  in  the  body  of  my  talk.  I  said  that  I  did  not  think 
that  legislation  could  do  any  thing  now  to  adjust  the  problem  of  wages. 
Education  of  the  people  is,  however,  certainly  the  primary  question;  an 
education  which  will  fit  men  to  win  higher  wages  by  doing  higher  work  ; 
an  education  of  the  whole  man  which  will  give  labor  the  powers  in  which  it 
can  win  its  dues.  Industrial  education  is  the  phase  of  education  which  has 
been  of  late  most  neglected  and  which  needs  most  bringing  up. 

Q.  But,  whatever  phase  is  developed,  it  requires  more  mpney? — A. 
Yes. 


MORAL  RESPONSIBILITIES  OF  WEALTH. 

Q.  And  that  must  be  got  by  legislation  ? — A.  Yes,  and  by  the  increase  of 
numbers  and  wealth. 

Q.  But  do  you  think  that  there  are  large  masses  of  capital  that  are  now 
badly  appropriated,  and  yet,  as  we  ordinarily  say,  innocently  appropriated, 
diverted  to  other  uses,  such  as  the  extravagant  expenditures  in  which  many 
individuals  indulge,  as  in  dress,  in  buildings,  and  the  like  ? — A.  I  do,  sir. 

Q.  I  suppose  that  in  this  city  probably  an  expenditure  of  $2,500  on  each 
of  the  tenement  houses,  whether  in  the  form  of  improvements  or  otherwise, 
would  give  to  each  family  occupying  the  house  very  much  better  accommo- 
dations than  they  now  have  ? — A.  Yes. 

Q.  Suppose,  in  illustration  of  the  idea,  that  some  one  of  these  capitalists 
should  erect  a  private  residence  at  the  cost  of  $2,000,000.  He  pays  that 
$2,000,000  for  labor  in  some  form  or  other,  does  he  not  ? — A.  Certainly. 

Q.  If,  however,  that  same  amount  of  money  were  put  out  in  the  way  of 
improving  tenements  at  $2,500  apiece  for  a  family,  there  would  be  the 
same  amount  of  money  spent  ? — A.  Yes  ;  while  the  results  would  be  very 
different. 

Q.  How  would  the  results  compare  ? — A.  Between  the  luxury  of  one  man 
and  the  health  and  comfort  and  decency  and  virtue  of  large  classes. 

Q.  In  other  words,  do  you  think  that  there  is  any  moral  right  on  the  part 
of  the  administrator  of  large  amounts  of  wealth  to  so  invest  his  money 
beyond  his  real  necessities  and  comforts — those  that  seem  to  be  essential  to 
himself  and  his  family — as  to  involve  these  extraordinary  sums,  or  sums  be- 
yond that  limit  ? — A.  I  do  not,  most  decidedly.  A  few  years  ago  the  ques- 
tion of  tenement-house  reform  was  agitated  here.  The  papers  took  it  up 
with  great  enthusiasm,  and  gave  accounts  day  by  day  of  what  was  being 
done  in  that  direction.  Some  of  the  best  men  of  business  in  this  city  were 
interested — not  men  themselves  of  enormous  fortunes, — and  for  a  time  it 
looked  as  though  a  great  chauge  was  going  to  be  introduced.  What  was 
the  result  of  that  ?  No  man  of  great  fortune  in  this  city  came  forward  to 
give  a  lift  to  that  movement  ;  no  man  of  those  whose  names  would  come 
naturally  to  your  mind  arose  to  help  the  effort.  Although  they  had  to  invest 
their  money,  none  of  them  saw  fit  to  supply  that  crying  need,  even  though 
it  was  demonstrated  by  the  experience  of  the  English,  and  of  Mr.  White,  in 
Brooklyn,  that  it  would  make  a  good  investment.  Such  is  the  tendency  to 
invest  money  in  purely  speculative  schemes,  that  the  enterprise  fell  far  short 
of  its  possibilities.  One  block  of  modern  buildings  has  been  put  up,  but 
what  is  one  block  in  this  city  ?  There  was  an  opportunity  for  men  of  these 
enormous  fortunes,  not  to  give  their  money  away  (I  do  not  believe  in  char- 
ity as  the  true  mode  of  permanently  improving  the  condition  of  poverty), 
but  to  invest  their  money  in  decent  homes  for  our  wage-workers  ;  homes 
which  should  return  to  capital  its  due  reward,  while  transforming  the  whole 
life  of  the  poor.  So  feeble  was  the  sense  of  social  responsibility  on  the  part 
of  our  men  of  great  fortunes,  that  not  one  of  them  came  forward  to  this 
opportunity.  _- 

Q.  Do  you  believe  that  the  wealthy  man  has  any  moral  right  to  thus  mis- 
appropriate his  money,  any  more  than  to  burn  it  up  ? — A.  No,  sir. 


THE  SOCIAL  FACTOR  IN    WEALTH.  367 

Q.  You  do  not  believe  that  he  has  any  more  moral  right  to  do  that  than 
to  destroy  his  jewels  by  dissolving  them  in  acid  ? — A.  No,  sir  ;  and  not  only 
do  I  believe  that  he  has  no  moral  right  to  do  so,  I  believe  that  he  has  no 
economic  right  to  do  so.  There  is  no  such  thing  as  pure  private  property. 
No  man  makes  his  money  by  himself  alone.  Each  man  makes  his  money 
through  the  co-operating  labor  and  skill  of  others.  The  manufacturer  has 
his  hands  working  with  him  and  for  him,  who  really  produce  the  goods  out 
of  which  he  makes  his  fortune.  The  trader  or  the  carrier  has  the  whole 
country  working  with  and  for  him.  We  see  this  most  clearly  in  the  case  of 
real-estate  speculation.  Did  the  first  Mr.  Astor  make  his  huge  fortune  by 
himself  ?  He  doubtless  had  the  foresight  which  others  lacked  ;  but  what 
was  his  foresight  ?  The  vision  of  the  hosts  who  would  come  here  to  build  up 
a  great  city.  They  came  and  have  kept  coming,  and  they — the  hosts  of  men 
who  get  a  bare  living  as  well  as  those  who  get  comfortable  fortunes  ;  labor- 
ers, mechanics,  manufacturers,  traders,  merchants,  etc. — have  builded  up 
New  York,  and  given  to  its  land  the  enormous  value  in  which  Mr.  Astor's 
lots  have  shared.  The  city  has  built  up  Mr.  Astor's  huge  wealth.  The  city 
has  not  only  a  moral  claim,  it  has  an  economic  claim,  hard  and  solid  as  his 
own  land.  It  holds  a  first  mortgage  on  every  house  of  the  Astor  estate, 
which  it  is  not  charity  but  simple  justice  to  recognize.  And  so  with  every 
other  form  of  private  wealth,  though  we  cannot  always  as  clearly  trace  the 
connection. 

Private  wealth  is  literally  a  social  trust.  It  is  a  function  called  into 
action  by  society  for  the  good  of  the  body.  This  matter  can  even  be  re- 
duced to  an  arithmetical  statement,  which  ought  to  satisfy  the  hardest- 
headed  millionnaire.  And,  lest  I  should  be  put  down  at  once  as  a  "  senti- 
mentalist," let  me  again  shelter  myself  behind  so  unsentimental  an  authority 
as  Mr.  Edward  Atkinson. 

I  have  already  quoted  his  remark,  but  its  substance  will  bear  repetition 
here.  He  showed  his  hearers  that  the  sum  total  of  the  divisible  amount 
per  annum  is  a  definite  and  knowable  amount,  yielding  a  definite  and  cal- 
culable income,  when  divided  by  the  population  of  the  land.  He  showed 
that  the  average  annual  productivity  of  the  country  represented  an  amount 
which,  if  distributed  equally  to  every  man,  woman,  and  child,  would  give 
to  each  person  50  cents  a  day.  And  then  he  told  them,  in  the  words  which 
I  have  already  quoted,  that  by  as  much  as  any  of  them  had  more  than  this 
50  cents  per  diem,  some  one  or  some  ones  had  less,  there  being  no  alterna- 
tive to  such  an  arithmetical  problem. 

Q.  Then  this  matter  of  what  you  call  absolute  individual  ownership  is,  from 
necessity,  subject  to  some  such  limitations  as  that  which  may  be  drawn  by  the 
law  ? — A.  So  it  seems  to  me.  Society  has  the  right  to  limit  the  growth  of  the 
private  fortunes  which  it  really  creates.  If  it  finds  them  becoming  exces- 
sive and  so  harmful,  it  can  take  measures  to  limit  them.  In  such  action  it 
should,  of  course,  proceed  gradually  and  carefully,  and  in  the  light  of  the 
various  experiments  made  by  other  peoples.  It  could  limit  the  entail, 
devoting  all  over  a  certain  amount  to  the  State  for  public  uses  ;  or  it  could 
introduce  an  income  tax.  Either  of  these  resorts  would  be  better  than  set- 


368 


PALACE    VS.    TENEMENT. 


ting  a  limit  to  accumulation.  That  would  be  a  dangerous  experiment.  We 
don't  want  to  kill  the  goose  that  lays  the  golden  egg.  Indeed,  I  should 
deprecate  the  resort  to  legislation  at  all,  until  a  fair  experiment  has  been 
made  of  what  can  be  done  through  the  moral  forces  of  public  sentiment  ; 
an  experiment  on  which  we  have  scarcely  entered  as  yet.  Still,  I  think  we 
might  hold  this  rod  of  legislation  over  our  great  fortunes  as  an  extra  incen- 
tive to  good  behavior. 

Of  one  thing  I  am  sure.  Society  must  either  teach  great  wealth  its  duties, 
or  prevent  the  handing  down  of  these  great  fortunes,  or  even,  as  a  last  re- 
sort, their  accumulation. 

Q.  Which  does  the  most  harm  in  society — and  *  ask  it  with  reference  to 
its  effect  upon  the  example  of  the  classes  below  who  are  disposed  to  imitate 
what  they  see  above  them,  as  wealth,  fashion,  etc. — which  does  the  most 
harm  in  society,  one  of  those  pestiferous  tenement  houses  at  one  end  of  the 
city  or  the  private  palace  at  the  other  ? — A.  What  do  you  mean  by  harm — 
physical  or  moral  ? 

Q.  Which  does,  on  the  whole,  the  most  harm  ? — A.  The  tenement  house 
breeds  the  most  disease. 

Q.  Very  well,  which  does  the  most  harm  in  society  ? — A.  I  fancy  that  if 
the  sum  total  of  evil  influences  issuing  from  a  luxurious  palace  could  be  ad- 
measured— the  impulse  it  gives  to  extravagance  and  luxury  ;  the  wasteful 
and  costly  fashions  it  sets  ;  the  strain  it  adds  to  the  high  tension  of  life  ;  the 
temptation  it  thus 'opens  to  businessmen,  goaded  to  speculation  and  pecu- 
lation to  keep  up  with  the  "  style  "  ;  the  stimulus  it  gives  to  the  idle  and 
frivolous  and  sensuous  life  of  women  (and  sensuous  is  not  far  from  sensual); 
the  inspiration  it  imparts  to  our  worship  of  wealth  ;  the  alienation  of  classes 
it  engenders  by  its  wanton  display  of  riches  ; — I  say  if  all  these  and  other 
far-reaching,  subtle  influences  could  be  rightly  admeasured,  we  might  well 
say  that  a  palace  is  more  harmful  to  the  city  than  a  tenement  house. 

Take  a  fact  which  illustrates  one  point  made  above.  A  workingman  was 
in  the  midst  of  a  crowd  that  was  looking  at  a  great  house  lately  built  in  this 
city.  A  person  passing  by  observed  this  man,  and  saw  his  brow  knit  and 
his  fists  clenched.  It  was  at  the  time  that  some  beautiful  bronze  work  was 
being  put  up.  And  then  he  heard  the  man  mutter,  "  That  '11  have  to  go  to 
the  melting-pot  one  day."  When  poverty-stricken  workingmen  see  such 
houses  built,  and  near  by  stables  for  the  rich  man's  horses,  finer  far  and 
wealthier  than  any  home  they  can  ever  get  for  themselves  and  their  children, 
is  it  any  wonder  that  mutterings  are  heard  ;  the  groanings  of  the  blind 
sense  of  wrong,  out  of  which  come  revolutions  and  anarchy  ? 

Q.  This  extravagant  expenditure  in  private  architecture  is  everywhere. — 
A.  It  is  certainly  growing  rapidly. 

Q.  I  suppose  you  do  not  lose  sight  of  the  aesthetic  effects  of  that  ? 

A.  Doubtless  great  wealth  has  always  been  a  patron  of  art.  There  is  a 
good  side  to  this  palace-building,  I  am  well  aware.  Certainly,  with  the 
rapid  increase  of  large  wealth  amoog  us,  taste  in  domestic  art  has  wonder- 
fully improved.  And  this  is  altogether  good,  in  so  far  as  the  law  of 
restraint  is  observed  and  art  is  prized  for  its  beauty  and  not  for  its  rarity  or 


ART  AND    WEALTH.  369 

costliness.  But  here  comes  in  the  inevitable  danger.of  the  art  which  is  fed 
from  great  wealth.  That  art  is  drawn  aside  from  its  simplicity,  its  high 
ideals,  its  just  restraint,  its  purity  and  seriousness.  Great  wealth  tempts 
art  to  work  for  high  pay  ;  to  minister  to  the  whims  and  follies  of  Croesus  ; 
to  pamper  pride  and  ostentation  ;  to  stoop  to  frivolous  aims,  and  to  rest 
content  with  brilliant  tricks ;  to  whet  the  sensual  appetite  of  its  idle 
and  pleasure-loving  patrons.  I  am  not  drawing  on  my  fancy.  This  is  the 
story  that  all  history  reads.  Art  has  always  been  seduced  and  corrupted  by 
wealth  ;  and  then,  art  itself  has  turned  procuress  to  the  lords  of  hell  ! 
Athens  and  Venice  and  every  other  city  of  art  tell  the  same  tale.  We  have 
been  rarely  fortunate  in  having  had  in  the  man  who,  more  than  any  other, 
has  guided  the  domestic  decoration  of  our  city,  a  noble  nature  animating 
great  artistic  powers.  His  ideals  have  been  the  highest,  and  his  canons  of 
art  the  soundest ;  and  he  has  done  a  vast  service  in  starting  our  aesthetic 
progress  along  right  lines.  But  how  long  will  the  early  restraint  be 
allowed  by  men  eager  to  outshine  their  rivals  ?  We  are  only  in  the  first 
dawn  of  the  art  which  wealth  feeds,  and  it  is  too  early  to  feel  much  of  its 
corrupting  touch.  But  this  gifted  genius  to  whom  I  have  referred, 
who  knew  well  what  art  was  really  desired  by  our  very  wealthy  people,  was 
any  thing  but  sanguine  of  the  tendencies  at  work.  No  more  severe  judg- 
ment on  this  question  have  I  ever  heard  or  read  than  that  of  the  man 
to  whom  our  city  owes  so  much.  He  knew  too  well  with  what  ignorance, 
conceit,  pride,  ostentation,  and  folly  art  has  to  struggle  when  it  accepts 
Croesus  as  its  patron.  What  do  you  think  of  an  estimable  family  proposing 
to  decorate  a  dining-room  ceiling  with  a  copy  of  the  paintings  to  which  the 
demi-monde  looks  up  in  a  celebrated  cafe  of  Paris  ?  A  fine  patronship  of 
art  is  American  shoddy  !  The  one  hope  is,  that  it  may  be  conscious  of  its 
own  ignorance,  and  leave  to  a  man  who  understands  his  vocation  full 
liberty  to  do  his  best. 

By  Mr.  CALL  ; 

Q.  Where  do  these  ideas  carry  you  t  Would  not  that  be  true  if  one  man 
lived  in  a  plain  house,  and  another  in  a  house  a  little  plainer,  and  the 
one  that  lived  in  the  plainer  house  should  say  that  he  would  like  to  live  in  a 
house  like  the  other  man's  ? — A.  It  is  easy  to  push  any  principle,  by  mere 
excess,  to  a  reductio  ad  absurdum.  In  every  principle  we  must  observe  the 
golden  mean.  This  principle  is  open  to  such  a  logical  conclusion  as  you 
draw.  But  fortunately  we  don't  live  by  logic.  There  is  such  a  thing 
as  common  sense,  and  that  saves  us  from  the  folly  of  allowing  no  difference 
between  men  because  we  have  to  restrain  too  great  differences.  History 
does  not  warrant  us  in  expecting  any  such  direful  results  from  the  principle 
that  great  wealth  is  harmful. 

More(5ver,  if  great  wealth  only  seeks  to  use  its  powers  with  decent  regard 
to  the  rest  of  mankind,  there  is  no  envy  felt  of  its  luxury  ;  while  if  it  really 
seeks  the  good  of  the  community,  the  whole  people  will  be  proud  of  it.  Who 
ever  would  have  grudged  dear  old  Peter  Cooper  the  finest  house  he  could 
have  builded  ? 


37°          LUXURY  AND  EMPLOYMENT  OF  LABOR. 

Q.  That  is  another  line  of  argument.  But  I  want  to  know  what  harm 
there  is  in  the  building  of  that  house  by  the  gentleman  you  name  without 
reference  to  the  question  of  whether  he  uses  his  wealth  properly  or 
improperly.  What  harm  does  building  a  fine  house  do  ?  There  is  not  any 
expenditure  in  the  world  that  does  not  benefit  some  meritorious  person,  and 
go  into  the  channels  of  employment  in  a  proper  and  legitimate  way,  and 
even  a  beneficent  way. — A.  Doubtless.  But  if  you  will  kindly  recall  what 
has  already  passed,  you  will  find  that  we  have  discussed  this  point,  and  I 
have  stated  my  views  on  the  question.  All  expenditure  employs  labor. 
That  is  the  law  of  the  natural  communism  by  which  Dives  has  to  feed 
Lazarus  with  the  crumbs  that  fall  from  his  table.  But  expenditures  differ 
as  widely  as  heaven  and  hell.  I  may,  in  spending  money,  employ  labor  at 
tasks  that  enfeeble  its  health,  debase  its  mind,  corrupt  its  character  ;  or  at 
tasks  that  build  up  body,  mind,  and  soul.  The  man  who  patronizes 
a  grog-shop,  a  gambling-hell,  or  a  brothel  employs  people,  and  so  does  the 
man  who  goes  to  church.  But  there  is  some  difference  on  the  people 
employed  and  on  society  at  large.  It  seems  to  me  that  only  one  half  the 
truth  is  told  in  the  common  sophism  about  luxury's  employing  labor.  The 
other  half  is,  at  what  and  how  does  it  employ  labor  ?  We  have  to 
consider  the  nature  of  the  demand  wealth  makes,  as  well  as  the  fact  of  the 
demand  ;  its  quality  as  well  as  its  quantity.  And  then  we  have  to  consider 
the  question,  already  discussed,  of  the  moral  bearings  on  society  of  extrava- 
gance and  luxury,  of  which  the  palace  is  the  type.  In  itself,  it  may  have 
employed  labor  well  ;  but  what  is  the  sum  total  of  the  influence  of  this  new 
departure  in  our  American  manners  ?  That  is  the  question. 

Q.  You  might  spend  your  money  in  a  liquor-shop  and  not  do  much  good  ; 
but  the  finer  the  house  you  build,  the  better  for  all  classes  of  people. — 
A.  Possibly.  Certainly,  if  the  house  is  truly  fine  and  cultures  the  taste  of 
the  people.  In  so  far  as  wealth  stimulates  true  art,  it  is  doing  a  public 
service. 

Q.  Do  you  think  that  the  aesthetic  influence  is  good  in  human  life  ? — A. 
Most  assuredly.  But  it  must  be  genuine  cestheticism,  and  not  the  "  Oscar 
Wilde  "  sort.  And,  as  I  have  observed,  I  am  suspicious  of  the  sort  of  art 
that  great  wealth  tends  to  call  out,  in  the  long  run. 

Q.  That  is  not  because  of  any  rule  or  logic,  that  art  cannot  be  developed 
out  of  luxury. — A.  Perhaps  not.  But  I  incline  to  believe  that  the  nature 
and  constitution  of  things  does  ordain  that  no  highest  art  shall  spring  out  of 
mere  luxury.  Luxury  always  implies  want  over  against  it.  It  is,  therefore, 
an  unsound  social  life.  And  out  of  an  unsound  society  how  shall  a  sound 
art  arise  ?  How  shall  pure,  high,  noble  visions  be  seen  through  the 
atmosphere  of  luxury,  since  luxury  means  thoughtlessness  or  indifference 
to  the  human  suffering  at  its  door,  frivolity,  or  selfishness  ?  We  have 
pretty  high  authority  for  such  a  view  of  the  relation  of  luxury  fco  art  in 
Ruskin. 

Q.  But  Ruskin  is  not  "gospel." — A.  Perhaps  not  ;  though,  as  I  think, 
whenever  his  ethical  sense  speaks  h'e  is  about  as  near  "  gospel  "  as  we  often 
hear.  But  he  does  not  stand  alone. 


WORKINGMEN  AND    THE    CHURCHES,  3/1 

Take  William  Morris,  certainly  a  high  authority  in  household  art.  His 
late  book,  "  Hopes  and  Fears  for  Art,"  is  far  more  radical  than  my  talk. 
He  contends  that  art  is  made  by  common  people  ;  that  it  grows  amid 
simple  surroundings  ;  that  its  defects  and  vices  to-day  are  due  mainly  to  its 
dependence  on  wealth  ;  that  if  ever  it  is  to  be  revived  it  must  be  in  a  true 
democracy.  He  distinctly  says;  "Indeed,  I  fear  that  at  present  the 
decoration  of  rich  men's  houses  is  mostly  wrought  out  at  the  bidding 
of  grandeur  and  luxury,  and  that  art  has  been  mostly  cowed  or  shamed  out 
of  them  ;  nor,  when  I  come  to  think  of  it,  will  I  lament  it  overmuch. 
Art  was  not  born  in  the  palace  ;  rather  she  fell  sick  there,  and  it  will  take 
more  bracing  air  than  that  of  rich  men's  houses  to  heal  her  again."  His 
love  of  pure  art  has  largely  driven  Mr.  Morris  into  Socialism. 

The  CHAIRMAN.  Men  popularly  known  as  leaders  in  the  labor  move- 
ment and  organizations  have  been  before  the  committee,  and  many  of  them 
have  given  testimony  to  the  effect  that  evangelical  Christianity  is  very 
rapidly  losing  its  hold  upon  the  masses  of  wage-workers  in  this  country.  I 
suppose  you  have  studied  that  matter  from  a  somewhat  different  stand- 
point. I  would  like  to  know  what  your  views  are  as  to  that,  and  whether 
you  think  that  is  the  fact. 

The  WITNESS.     I  fear  that  there  is  too  much  truth  in  this  view. 

Q.   How  do  you  explain  that  fact  ? 

A.  I  explain  it  to  my  own  mind  partly  by  the  intellectual  movement 
of  our  age  and  partly  by  the  social  movement  of  our  age,  from  both  of 
which  movements  the  evangelical  churches  have  held  back. 

There  is  a  general  break-up  of  the  old  order  of  thought  now  going  on — a 
sort  of  climatic  change  in  the  human  mind,  in  which  the  growth  of  former 
periods  is  disappearing  rapidly  from  the  world.  The  forms  of  belief  of 
the  Middle  Ages  find  the  conditions  unfavorable  for  them,  and  are  drying 
up  of  themselves  ;  they  are  becoming  unthinkable  and  unbelievable. 
About  this  fact,  as  a  fact,  there  can  be  no  manner  of  doubt  ;  it  is  unques- 
tionably true,  and  I  shall  not  spend  time  in  proving  it. 

By  this  change  I  do  not  at  all  mean  a  dying  out  of  religion  or  of  Chris- 
tianity. Religion  I  hold  to  be  the  natural  and  necessary  expression  of 
man's  spiritual  nature  before  the  mystery  of  the  Power  in  which  we  live 
and  move  and  have  our  being.  The  faiths  of  religion  I  hold  to  be  the 
spontaneous  and  natural  instincts  and  intuitions  of  the  human  soul ;  the 
affirmations  it  makes  in  the  presence  of  the  realities  it  fronts  ;  the  forms  of 
its  consciousness.  As  such  I  hold  these  faiths  to  be  as  valid  as  any  other 
affirmations  of  human  nature — as  the  cognitions  of  the  intellect  or  the  per- 
ceptions of  the  senses.  Therefore,  as  it  seems  to  me,  there  is  no  need  of 
our  worrying  ourselves  about  the  possible  dying  out  of  religion.  It  never 
has  died  out,  except  to  find  a  resurrection  in  a  higher  form.  While  man's 
nature  remains  it  is  likely  to  remain  with  it. 

But  it  may  and  does  need  new  forms — new  growths  of  thought — higher 
bodies  of  belief  in  which  the  old  spirit  may  live  on  after  the  death  and 
burial  of  its  worn-out  "  bodies  of  divinity."  And  it  is  the  business  of  the 
Church  to  see  that  there  is  free  play  given  to  this  natural  development.  If 


372  INTELLECTUAL  AND   SOCIAL  FACTORS. 

it  does  see  to  it,  if  it  changes  its  thought  with  the  changing  knowledge  of 
man,  if  it  grows  with  his  growth,  it  will  never  be  outgrown. 

Now,  Christianity  is  evidently  passing  through  one  of  these  critical 
stages  of  death  and  resurrection.  The  mass  of  open-minded,  intelligent 
men  have  already  made  up  their  minds  about  the  old  theology.  They  find 
it  simply  obsolete.  It  does  n't  translate  itself  into  our  speech  or  represent 
the  real  thought  and  true  knowledge  of  our  age.  If  the  fact  were  per- 
ceived and  owned  by  the  Church,  and  if  its  doctors  busied  themselves  in 
thinking  the  old  thoughts  over  into  the  new  forms  made  necessary  by  our 
age,  all  would  be  well.  Religion  would  find  forms  in  which  it  could  live 
and  act,  and  Christianity  would  take  a  new  lease  of  life. 

Instead  of  which  the  Church  doctors,  for  the  most  part,  only  repeat  the 
old  words  more  loudly,  insist  on  the  old  thought  more  positively,  and 
denounce  the  new  knowledge  as  hostile  to  religion.  They  are  simply  driv- 
ing off  the  intelligence  of  our  age  from  the  evangelical  churches.  And  in 
this  alienation  the  workingman  shares.  So  much  for  that  half  of  my  ex- 
planation. 

Now,  as  to  the  other  half,  there  is  a  parallel  story  of  obstructiveness  on 
the  part  of  the  Church,  with  similar  effect. 

Our  age  is  pre-eminently,  perhaps,  the  age  of  sociology.  Social  science 
— the  latest  born  of  the  sciences — is  felt  to  come  as  the  natural  head  of 
them  all.  Every  other  study  leads  up  to  the  construction  of  a  true  social 
order.  And  while  it  is  the  business  of  the  science  of  political  economy, 
sanitary  science,  the  science  of  education,  etc.,  to  gather  the  materials 
of  knowledge  out  of  which  to  build  this  social  structure,  and  to  elaborate 
the  plans  by  which  it  is  to  be  reared,  it  is  the  business,  as  I  see  it,  of 
religion  to  inspire  the  spirit  which  is  to  energize  this  herculean  task.  It  is 
religion's  function  to  waken  the  enthusiasm  of  humanity,  as  the  love  of 
God,  and  to  set  this  omnipotent  force  at  work  on  the  building  of  the  City 
of  God. 

When  true  to  itself  it  always  has  so  done,  and,  so  doing,  has  kept  its 
grip  of  man  firm  and  fast. 

Christianity  ought  to  be  by  heredity  a  religious  Socialism.  It  is  the 
child  of  Hebrew  prophetism.  And  the  most  striking  feature  of  the 
religion  of  the  great  prophets  was  that  it  was  a  social  aspiration.  The 
state  of  Jewish  society  then  was  a  close  counterpart  to  the  state  of  things 
now  existing.  The  old  land  Communism  of  the  early  Hebrews  had  given 
way,  and  great  barons  were  monopolizing  land,  and  great  traders  were 
amassing  big  fortunes,  while  labor  was  being  thrust  by  land  and  capital 
down  into  poverty  and  pauperism.  Then  the  prophets  began  to  preach 
such  a  gospel  as  "  Woe  to  them  that  join  house  to  house  till  there  be  no 
room  left  in  the  land."  "  Woe  to  them  that  eat  up  my  people  as  if  they 
were  bread." 

A  new  sense  of  justice  and  brotherliness  was  aroused  ;  and  when,  long 
afterwards,  the  reformed  religion  of  the  prophets  came  into  power  and  be- 
came the  established  religion  of  Israel,  it  produced  the  most  remarkable 
social  legislation  that  the  world  has  seen — the  Levitical  legislation  on 


THE   CHURCH'S  FALL.  373 

economics.  This  legislation  nationalized  the  land  of  Israel,  and  vested  the 
title  in  Jehovah  ;  forbade  interest,  and  freed  all  debtors  once  in  fifty  years, 
when  the  land  was  re-allotted.  All  this  was  to  the  end  "  that  there  be  no 
poverty  in  the  land." 

Original  Christianity,  as  we  are  now  learning  to  read  the  secret  history  of 
its  origins,  was  also  a  religious  Socialism. 

In  that  age  Roman  maladministration  had  broken  up  the  peasant  pro- 
prietorship of  free  Italy  and  developed  vast  landed  estates,  substituting 
slave  for  free  labor.  Rome  itself  was  crowded  with  a  degraded  proletariat. 
The  provinces  were  drained  to  support  the  luxury  of  the  capital.  Among 
the  oppressed  and  discontented  classes  secret,  underground  societies  were 
springing  up,  as  if  by  magic  ;  brotherhoods  having  a  common  meal  as  a 
sign  of  fellowship. 

When  the  original  gospel  was  preached  among  the  poor  of  the  great  cities 
it  acted  on  this  mass  of  discontent  and  rising  aspiration  as  the  yeast  in 
flour.  It  was  told  about  from  man  to  man  that  God  had  come  down  to 
earth  again  in  the  form  of  a  carpenter's  son.  He  had  taught  men  to  look 
up  to  an  All-Father  and  to  live  as  brothers.  He  had  promised  to  come 
back  from  the  skies  at  the  head  of  legions  of  angels  and  overthrow  the 
tyranny  of  man  and  set  up  the  kingdom  of  God.  Then  the  good  time 
coming  would  come  at  last. 

This  I  believe  was  really  the  secret  of  the  quick  working  of  early  Chris- 
tianity. Whatever  the  Christianity  of  philosophers  and  rabbins  may  have 
been,  the  popular  Christianity  appears  to  have  been  a  religious  Socialism, 
such  as  I  have  suggested.  The  Christian  Communism  of  the  early  Church 
at  Jerusalem  was  a  type  of  the  social  aspiration  of  the  whole  Church. 

Now,  I  believe  that  this  was  the  real  genius  of  Christianity,  inherited 
from  the  Hebrew  prophets.  It  was  a  religion  that  was  expected  to 
make  the  world  over.  And  in  great  revivals  of  Christianity,  such  as  the 
early  dawn  of  the  Reformation,  about  which  men  are  thinking  now,  this 
feature  has  renewed  itself. 

If  this  strong  social  instinct  had  been  kept  alive  and  the  Christian  Church 
had  continued  to  lead  the  aspiration  of  man  for  a  better  civilization,  would 
it  ever  have  lost  its  hold  on  men  ? 

A  sense  of  wrong  is  a  mighty  strong  eye-wash.  It  will  clear  out  a  lot  of 
sophisms  which  blind  men's  eyes. 

The  well-to-do  classes  are  not  quick  to  see  how  completely  the  Christian 
Church  has  forgotten  its  Master's  gospel,  and  become  the  church  of  respect- 
ability and  wealth  and  "  society  "  ;  how  it  has  become  the  upholder  of  civ- 
ilization as  it  is  ;  how  it  has  accepted  the  anti-Christian  dogmas  of  the  older 
political  economists,  and  in  so  doing  really  turned  traitor  to  the  ethics  of 
Jesus  Christ. 

But  the  workingman  sees  all  this  quickly  enough,  his  eyesight,  as  I  said, 
being  sharpened  by  the  sense  of  wrong.  Is  it  any  wonder  that  he  turns 
away  from  a  Church  that  has  no  better  gospel  than  laissez  faire,  no  better 
brotherhood  than  the  selfish  strife  of  competition,  no  kingdom  of  God  for 
human  society  here  upon  the  earth,  but  only  one  up  in  the  skies  ;  a  Church 


3/4  THE  NEW  CHRISTIANITY, 

which  baptizes  the  kingdom  of  the  Devil  with  fine  Christian  names,  and  asks 
the  suffering  mass  of  men  to  accept  it  as  the  will  of  the  good  Father  in 
heaven  ?  The  only  wonder  is  that  in  such  an  apostasy  from  its  Lord's  life 
and  spirit  the  Church  has  kept  any  hold  upon  the  workingman. 

But  I  believe  that  there  is  a  mighty  change  going  on  in  the  Christian 
Church.  One  sees  the  signs  of  it  everywhere.  Let  me  mention  one  fact. 
Four  years  ago  I  was  asked  to  make  a  speech  at  the  Church  Congress  of  the 
Protestant  Episcopal  Church  upon  "Communism  and  Republicanism." 
What  I  had  to  say  you  can  probably  guess  from  my  talk  to-day.  I  expected 
to  stand  nearly  alone  in  the  position  I  took,  counting  only  on  Dr.  Rylance, 
of  this  city,  as  being  on  that  side  of  the  question.  To  my  surprise,  every 
one  of  the  seven  writers  and  speakers  took  very  much  the  same  ground,  and 
the  congress  went  in  spirit  with  them. 

Only  a  few  days  ago  I  came  across  a  little  paper,  published  in  London, 
called  The  Christian  Socialist.  It  bears  the  name  of  the  movement 
started  a  generation  ago  by  Maurice  and  Kingsley  and  their  friends,  and  is 
a  sign  of  the  times.  The  new  movement  in  religious  thought  runs  into  the 
channel  of  a  new  social  righteousness. 

The  Christian  Union,  which  represents  this  movement  in  Congregational- 
ism, is  thoroughly  outspoken  on  questions  of  monopoly,  strikes,  etc.  In- 
deed, the  new  Christianity,  which  is  coming  on  fast,  is  going  quite  surely  to 
find  the  old  social  enthusiasm.  It  will  preach  justice,  and  not  charity,  and 
will  inspire  men  to  seek  not  so  much  to  save  their  souls  as  to  save  society. 

And  then  I  have  no  fears  about  the  attitude  of  the  workingmen  to  the 
Church  of  the  Carpenter's  Son. 

Q.  You  believe,  then,  that  one  of  the  things  essential  is  for  the  Church  to 
reform  herself  ?  A.  I  do,  most  assuredly. 


NOTE   II. 

WORKS    BEARING   ON    SOCIALISM. 

/.  Political  Economy  in  General. 

Among  others  : 

1.  Guide  to  Political  Economy.    (Gives  information  concerning  writers.) 

2.  History  of  Political  Economy  in  Europe.     A.  Blanqui. 

3.  Wealth  of  Nations.    Adam  Smith.    McCulloch's  or  Thorold  Rogers' 

edition. 

4.  Some  Leading  Principles  of  Political  Economy  Newly  Expounded. 

J.  E.  Cairnes. 

5.  Manual  of  Political  Economy.     H.  Fawcett. 

6.  Lectures  on  Political  Economy.     Nassau  W.  Senior. 

7.  Manual  of  Social  Science.     (Principles  of  Social  Science  abridged.) 

H.  C.  Carey. 

8.  The  Unity  of Law.     H.C.Carey. 


BOOKS  ON  SOCIALISM.  375 

9.   Social  Science  and  National  Economy.     R.E.Thompson. 

10.  Elements  of  Political  Economy.     Emile  de  Laveleye. 

11.  Studies  in  Political  Economy.     Thomas  Chalmers. 

12.  Principles  of  Political  Economy.     W.  Roscher. 

//.   Semi- Socialism ;  Socialists  of  the  Chair,  etc. 

1.  Der  Kapitalismus  und  Socialismus.     Schaffle.     Edition  1870.    (His- 

tory of  Socialism  ;  account  of  the  principal  writers,  with  a  critique 
of  the  doctrines.) 

2.  Politische  Oekonomie.     Adolf  Wagner. 

3.  Principles  of  Political  Economy.     John  Stuart  Mill. 

4.  Unsettled  Questions  in  Political  Economy.     John  Stuart  Mill. 

5.  Chapters  on  Socialism.     John  Stuart  Mill. 

6.  On  Labor.     W.  T.  Thornton. 

7.  Mtinera  Pulveris.     Essays  on  the  Elements  of  Political  Economy. 

John  Ruskin. 

8.  Fors  Clavigera.     Letters  to  Workingmen.     John  Ruskin. 

9.  Time  and  Tide.     John  Ruskin. 

10.  Unto  this  Last.     John  Ruskin. 

11.  Art  of  Political  Economy.     John  Ruskin. 

12.  Politics  for  the  People.     F.  D.  Maurice. 

13.  Lectures  on  Social  Questions .     J.  H.  Rylance,  D.D. 

14.  The  Position  of  Socialism  in  the  Historical  Development  of  Political 

Economy.    Henry  C.  Adams,  Ph.  D.   Penn  Monthly,  April,  1879. 

15.  Usury.     John  Ruskin.     Contemporary  Review,  February,  1880. 

///.   Socialism. 

1.  Histoire  de  F  Internationale.     Villetart. 

2.  History  of  the  Commune.     Vesinier. 

3.  Die  deutsche  Socialdemokratie.     Mehring.     (A  History  of   German 

Socialism.) 

4.  Das  Kapital.     Karl  Marx. 

5.  Arbeiter-Lesebuch.     Ferdinand  Lasalle. 

6.  Arbeiter-Frage.     Lange. 

7.  Lois  du  Travail  au  XIX.  Siecle.     Max  Wirth. 

8.  Organization  du  Travail.     Louis  Blanc. 

9.  Histoire  du  Communisme.     A.  Sudre. 

10.  Etudes  sur  les  Reformateurs  ou  Socialistes  Modernes.      L.  Reybaud. 

11.  Ferdinand  Lasalle.     Georg  Brandes. 

12.  The  Works  of  P.  J.  Proudhon  :  Vol.  I. ,  What  is  Property  ?     Trans- 

lated and  published  by  B.  R.  Tucker,  Princeton,  Mass. 

13.  St.  Simon  and  St.  Simonism.     A.  J.  Booth. 

14.  A    Russian   Panslavist  Programme.      C.    Tondini  de    Quarenghi. 

Contemporary  Review,  August,  1881. 


BOOKS  ON  SOCIALISM. 

15.  Socialism  of  To-day.     Laveleye. 

16.  Contemporary  Socialism.     John  Rae, 

17.  History  of  French  and  German  Socialism.     R.  T.  Ely. 

IV.     American  Socialism, 

1.  A  Labor  Catechism.     Osborne  Ward,  610  Bergen  Street,  Brooklyn. 

2.  Socialism  and  the  Worker.     F.  A.  Sorge,  Box  101,  Hoboken,  N.  J. 

3.  True  Civilization.     Josiah  Warren.     B.  R.  Tucker,  Princeton,  Mass. 

4.  Work  and    Wealth.     J.    K.   Ingalls.     Published   by  the    author,  5 

Worth  Street,  New  York. 

5.  Better  Times.     A.  Douai.     Published  by  the  Executive  Committee  of 

the  Workingmen's  Party,  Chicago. 

6.  Peacemaker  Grange.     Samuel  Leavitt.     Published  by  the  author,   5 

Worth  Street,  New  York. 

7.  Land  and  Laborer.     J.  K.  Ingalls,  5  Worth  Street,  New  York. 

8.  The  Co-operative  Commonwealth.     Laurence  Gronlund.     (An  embod- 

iment of  Karl  Marx's  views.) 

9.  Recent  American  Socialism.     Ely. 

10.  Papers.  John  Swinton's  Paper,  New  York.  The  Irish  World, 
New  York.  Liberty.  (Ultra-individualistic  and  Anarchic  in  the 
sense  of  Proudhon.)  Volks-Zeitung, 

V.     Anti-Socialism. 

1.  Der  Socialismus  iind  seine  Conner.     H.  von  Freitschke. 

2.  Communism  in  America.     Henry  Ammon  James. 

3.  Communism  and  Socialism,  in  their  History  and  Theoties.     T.  D. 

Woolsey. 

4.  Socialism.     Roswell  D.  Hitchcock,  D.D. 

5.  Socialism.     Joseph  Cook. 

6.  What  Social  Classes  Owe  to  Each  Other.     W.  G.  Sumner. 

7.  Property  and  Progress.     W.  H.  Mallock. 

8.  The  Distribution  of  Products.     Edward  Atkinson. 

9.  The  Progress  of  the  Working  Classes  in  the  Last  Half  Century.     Rob- 

ert Giffen. 

VI.     Descriptions  of  Communism,  Past  and  Present. 

1.  The  Early  History  of  Institutions.     Sir  Henry  Maine. 

2.  Village  Communities  in  the  East  and  West.     Sir  Henry  Maine. 

3.  Ancient  Law.     Sir  Henry  Maine.     Ch.  viii. 

4.  Primitive  Property.     Laveleye.     (A  Comprehensive   Presentation  of 

Researches  into  the  Prehistoric  Communisms.) 

5.  Russia.     D.  Mackenzie  Wallace.     Chs.  viii.  and  ix.     (Account  of  the 

Mir.) 

6.  History  of  American  Socialisms .     John  Humphrey  Noyes. 

7.  The  Communistic  Societies  in  the  United  States,     Charles  Nordhoff. 


BOOKS  ON  SOCIALISM.  377 

8.  Socialism  and  Communism  in  their  Practical  Applications.     Kauf- 

mann. 

9.  Ideal  Commonwealths.     Morley's  Universal  Library.     (Plutarch's  Life 

of  Lycurgus,  More's  Utopia,  Bacon's  New  Atalantis,  etc.) 

VII.      Concerning  Co-operation. 

1.  Cours  (f  Economic  Politique  a  /"  Usage  des  Ouvriers  et  des  Artisans, 

par  Schultze-Delitzsch.     B.  Rampal. 

2.  History  of  Co-operation  in  England.     George  J.  Holyoake. 

3.  Co-operative  Manual.     (An  abridgment  of  above.) 

4.  Co-operation  as  a  Business.     Charles  Barnard. 

5.  The  Association  of  Capital  with  Labor.     Being  the  Laws  and  Regu- 

lations of  Mutual  Assurance  Regulating  the  Social  Palace  at  Guise, 
France.  Jean  Baptiste  Andre  Godin,  the  Founder.  Published  by 
the  Woman's  Social  Science  Association  of  New  York,  Room  24, 
Cooper  Institute.  (A  sketch  of  the  most  remarkable  of  later  French 
experiments  in  industrial  reorganization.) 

6.  Pro  fit- Sharing,     Sedley  Taylor. 

7.  The  Irish  Land  and  Labor  Question  ;  illustrated  in  the  History  of 

Ralahine  and  Co-operative  Farming.     E.  T.  Craig. 

8.  The  Co-operative  News  (weekly),  Manchester,  England. 

9.  The  Building  Association  Journal  (monthly),  Philadelphia. 

VIII.     Concerning  Trades- Unions,  Etc. 

1.  The  History  and  Development  of  Gilds  and  the  Origin  of  Trades- 

Unions.     Lujo  Brentano. 

2.  English  Gilds  :  the  Original  Ordinances  of  More  than  One  Hundred 

Early  English  Gilds.     (Early  English  Text  Society.) 

3.  The    Conflict  of  Labor  and   Capital :  History   and    Review   of  the 

Trades-Unions  of  Great  Britain.     George  Howell. 

IX.     The  Land  Question. 

1.  Progress  and  Poverty.     Henry  George. 

2.  The  Irish  Land  Question.     Henry  George. 

3.  Protection  or  Free  Trade.     Henry  George. 

4.  Land  Nationalization.     A.  R.  Wallace. 

5.  Land  and  Labor.     D.  Godwin  Moody. 

6.  Primitive  Property.     Laveleye. 

7.  The  Land  Systems  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland.     J.  E.  Cliff  Leslie. 

8.  Our  Common  Lands,     Octavia  Hill. 

X.      Other  Special  Aspects  of  the  Social  Problem. 

1.  Railroads:   Their  Origin  and  Problems.     Charles  Francis  Adams,  Jr. 

2.  Report  of  Committee  of  New  York  legislature  on  Railroads.     1872. 


378  BOOKS  ON  SOCIALISM. 

3  Report  of  Committee  of  New   York  Legislature  on  Railroads.     1879. 
(Hepburn  Committee.) 

4.  Report  of  United  States  Senate  Committee  on  Transportation  Routes. 

1874. 

5.  Railroad   Transportation  :   Its  History  and  its  Laws.      Arthur  T. 

Hadley. 

6.  Sex  in  Industry.     Azel  Ames,  Jr.,  M.D. 

7.  Essays,    Moral,    Political,    and  Aesthetic.     Herbert  Spencer.     III. 

The  Morals  of  Trade. 

8.  Social  Condition  of  England  and  the  Continent  of  Europe.     Kay. 

9.  The  English  Peasantry.     Francis  George  Heath. 

10.  Pauperism  :  Its  Causes  and  Remedies.     I.  Y.  Fawcett. 

11.  Economics  for  the  People.     R.  R.  Bowker. 

12.  Labor  Differences  and  their  Settlement :  A   Plea  for  Arbitration. 

Joseph  D.  Weeks. 

13.  Manual  Training.:   The  Solution  of  Social  and  Industrial  Problems. 

Charles  H.  Ham. 

14.  Effect  of  Machinery  on  Wages.     J.  S.  Nicholson. 

15.  Report  of  United  States  Bureau  of  Education  on  Industrial  Education. 

16.  Second  Report  of  the  Royal  Commissioners  on    Technical  Education. 

(4  vols.) 

17.  First  Annual  Report  of the  Commissioner  of Labor  (U.  S.)  :    Indus- 

trial Depressions. 

1 8.  Wages  and  Earnings  of  the  Working  Classes.     Leone  Levi. 

19.  Work  and  Wages.     Thomas  Brassey. 

XI.     Reports  and  Statistics,  Etc. 

1.  Investigation  by  a  Select  Committee  of  the  House  of  Representatives 
,     Relative  to  the   Causes  of  the  •  General  Depression  in   Labor  and 

Business.     1879.     45th  Congress,  3d  Session.     Mis    Doc.  No.  29. 

2.  Labor  and  Capital.     Investigation  of  Senate  Committee  on  Educa- 

tion and  Labor.     (Blair  Com.)     1885. 

3.  The  State  of  Labor  in  Europe.     Reports  from  the  United  States  Con- 

suls in  the  several  countries  of  Europe  on  the  Rate  of  Wages,' Cost 
of  Living  to  the  Laborer,  etc.  45th  Congress,  1st  Session.  Exec. 
Doc.  No.  5. 

4.  Report  on  Labor  in  Europe  and  America.     E.  Young. 

5.  Reports  of  Bureau  of  Labor  and  Statistics  of  Massachusetts. 

6.  Do.  New  Jersey. 

7.  Do.  New  York. 

8.  Do.  Pennsylvania.     (Bureau  of  Industrial  Statistics.) 

9.  Do.  Connecticut. 

10.  Do.  Ohio,  Missouri,  Illinois,  Indiana,  California,  Michigan,    Wis- 

consin, Iowa,  Maryland,  and  Kansas. 

1 1 .  Industrial  History  of  the  United  States.     Bolles. 

12.  The  Conditions  of  Nations,  Social  and  Political.     G.  W.  Kolb. 

13.  Balance  Sheet  of  the  World.     (1870-80.)     M.  G.  Mulhall. 


SOCIALISTIC  RELIGIONS.  379 


NOTE  III. 

GROUNDS    FOR    THE    POSITION    TAKEN   IN   ESSAY    IX.    ON    THE    SOCIALISTIC 
CHARACTER   OF    RELIGIOUS    REFORMATIONS. 

Authorities  for  the  position  taken  in  this  essay  are  not  very  plentiful, 
though  the  position  itself  seems  to  me  in  the  main  unquestionable.  His- 
torians have  until  very  lately  taken  slight  notice  of  the  social  aspects  of  the 
past.  Such  studies  as  those  of  Green  and  McM asters  are  novelties. 
Ecclesiastical  historians  manifest  the  same  lack  of  interest  in  the  politico- 
economic  phases  of  Church  life,  and  scarcely  deign  to  notice  the  facts  which 
now  we  want  so  much  to  know  about.  An  examination  of  Ewald,  for  ex- 
ample, with  reference  to  the  remarkable  socialistic  legislation  of  the  Thorah, 
will  be  amply  suggestive  on  this  point.  Even  were  our  modern  ecclesiasti- 
cal historians  really  interested  in  this  phase  of  their  subject,  they  themselves 
would  find  as  yet  comparatively  little  material  left  by  early  historians  for 
such  a  study.  One  has  but  to  turn  to  any  of  the  earlier  ecclesiastical  his- 
torians to  realize  how  completely  the  social  aspect  of  religion  has  been 
ignored.  We  come  in  all  our  studies  of  primitive  Christianity,  for  example, 
upon  hints  of  the  wealth  of  data  which  might  have  been  preserved  for  us — 
"  only  this  and  nothing  more."  We  must  at  present  theorize  from  hints, 
though  the  hints  are  often  strong  enough  to  satisfy  even  where  they  do  not 
prove. 

It  seems  unnecessary  to  point  out  the  hints  of  such  a  social  aspect  of 
primitive  Buddhism.  They  lie  on  the  surface  of  the  story  everywhere, 
whether  in  the  life  of  Gautama  himself  who  went  about  preaching  his 
"  Blessed  are  ye  poor,"  or  in  the  history  of  the  great  monastic  order  which 
created  a  genuine  religious  Communism  among  its  members.  The  poverty 
of  the  masses  of  India  has  for  ages  been  notorious,  and  must  have  appealed 
powerfully  to  the  tender  heart  of  Sakya-Muni,  while  the  injustice  of  society 
must  have  pointed  the  sharp,  stern,  ethical  appeals  of  that  marvellous 
teacher.  The  immediate  upspringing  of  a  Communistic  brotherhood  in 
primitive  Buddhism,  as  in  primitive  Christianity,  seems  to  me  to  tell  one 
and  the  same  tale.  In  each  case,  as  it  seems  to  me,  this  fact  meant  more 
than  a.  foti  stou  whence  to  gain  individual  peace  and  holiness — it  must  have 
meant  a  social  aspiration.  But  in  India,  society  has  never  become  devel- 
oped to  the  stage  of  social  self-consciousness,  and  does  not  even  to-day 
know  what  is  the  matter  with  it,  economically,  although  it  is  suffering  so 
keenly  from  a  chronic  disease.  It  were  useless,  therefore,  to  look  for  any 
clear  traces  of  a  socialistic  tendency  in  the  records  of  early  Buddhism.  We 
must  be  content  with  interpreting  the  unconscious  Socialism  of  the  Hindoo 
Friend  of  the  People.  A  study  of  the  social  teachings  of  Mencius  will 
show  that  in  as  unprogressive  an  eastern  land  as  China,  between  three  and 
four  hundred  years  before  Christ,  there  was  need  to  combat  Socialism. 
Mih  Teh  (450  B.  c.)  taught  a  genuine  Socialism,  which  his  followers  pushed 
on  into  extreme  Communism  ;  and  it  was  their  growing  power  that  Mencius 
sought  to  stem  in  his  sturdy,  practical  common-sense  wisdom.  (See  Intro- 


SOCIALISTIC  RELIGIONS. 

duction  to  "  The  Mind  of  Mencius.")  So  that  there  could  be  no  anachron- 
ism in  assigning  at  least  an  unconscious  Socialism  to  India,  in  the  same 
period.  (See  "  Buddha  :  His  Life,  Doctrine,  and  Order,"  Oldenburg,  p. 
354,  etc.) 

Concerning  the  socialistic  character  of  Hebrew  prophetism,  the  familiar 
pages  of  the  great  religio-social  and  political  reformers  of  Israel  are  the 
most  authoritative  and  convincing  testimony.  See  Isaiah,  i.  ;  iii.,  13,  14  ; 
x.,  1-4  ;  xi.,  1-9  ;  xxxii.  ;  xxxiii. ,  14-17  ;  Micah,  ii.  ;  vi.  ;  Leviticus,  xxv. 

For  such  hints  as  are  to  be  found  in  the  modern  historians  of  Israel,  see  : 

"  The  Religion  of  Israel,"  Kuenen,  i.,  62,  372  ;  and  ii.,  36  (The  Prophets 
as  Social  Reformers)  ;  i.,  316  (Nazarites)  ;  i.,  358  (Rechabites)  ;  ii.,  36 
(Sabbatical  Year  Found  in  Early  "  Judgments,"  and  reissued  in  Deuteron- 
omy) ;  ii.,  278  (Priestly  Legislation)  ;  ii.,  191  (Ownership  of  Land)  ;  iii., 
120  (Democracy  and  Religion  in  the  Later  History). 

"  History  of  the  Hebrew  Monarchy,"  F.  W.  Newman,  p.  15,  etc.  (So- 
cial Changes  Going  on  among  the  People)  ;  p.  227  (Solomon's  Trade  and 
Effects  of). 

"  Prophets  of  Israel,"  W.  Robertson  Smith,  pp.  84,  88,  95,  204,  239,  289, 
292,  429. 

"  Early  Hebrew  Life,"  John  Fenton  ;  Trubner  &  Co.,  London.  A  very 
small  but  most  suggestive  book.  Should  be  carefully  examined  in  this 
connection. 

Concerning  the  socialistic  character  of  primitive  Christianity,  see  last 
essay  in  this  volume,  "  Communism,"  §  xiii.,  for  outline  of  the  teaching  of 
Jesus,  and  Biblical  references  therefor. 

Cf.  also  "Jesus  of  Nazara,"  Keim,  i.,  365  (Essenism)  ;  "The  Religion 
of  Israel,"  Kuenen,  iii.,  127  (Essenism)  ;  "  The  Essenes,"  Ginsburg  ;  "  The 
Life  of  Jesus,"  Renan,  chapters  vii.,  xi.,  and  xvii.  ;  "St.  Paul,"  Renan, 
chapters  iv.,  v.,  and  ix.  ;  "  The  Apostles,"  Renan,  chapters  v.,  viii.,  xi., 
p.  184,  etc.  ;  xviii.,  p.  281  ;  "  The  Unseen  World  and  Other  Essays,"  John 
Fiske,  p.  88,  etc.  ;  "  Jesus,  His  Opinions  and  Character,"  p.  103,  etc. 

Readers  of  "  Arius  the  Libyan"  will  recall  its  interesting  endeavor  of 
sketch  the  original  Christian  communities  as  genuine  Communisms.  The 
author  of  that  book  has  in  preparation  a  work  aiming  to  show  that  primitive 
Christianity  was  in  reality  such  a  religious  Communism  ;  that  for  wellnigh 
three  centuries  the  recognized  property-law  of  the  Christian  societies  es- 
tablished a  genuine  commonwealth  in  those  simple  brotherhoods  ;  that  the 
persecutions  of  the  Roman  state,  so  difficult  to  account  for,  were,  in  reality, 
drawn  forth  by  this  character  of  those  secret  associations  ;  and  that  the  estab- 
lishment of  Christianity  as  the  State  religion  was  in  reality  the  victory  of 
the  Pagan  Individualism  over  this  Christian  Socialism.  His  working  up  of 
this  thesis  is  very  interesting  and  full  of  suggestiveness,  but,  to  my  mind, 
inconclusive.  His  own  interpretation  of  the  lack  of  data  for  such  a  theory 
is  drawn  from  the  well-known  historic  fact  of  the  systematic  tampering  of 
later  ecclesiastics  with  the  original  documents  of  primitive  Christianity.  To 
my  own  mind,  there  are  abundaat  hints  of  such  a  social  aspiration  as  I  have 
found  in  early  Christianity,  but  no  evidence  of  a  systematic  adoption  of 
Communism. 


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